Trust
by trufflemores
Summary: How much do Barry and Oliver trust each other? With their missions, their friends, their very lives?
1. Trust Test

For Barry, playing with a guy who knows what he's doing is a treat. He doesn't get to use his powers with other people for fun; leisure is almost exclusively limited to solo pursuits. He can run away from the rest of the world for a while, but he can take nothing and no one with him. They can't keep up; they aren't fast enough.

It's different with Oliver. Even accounting for the barrier of Barry's speed, Oliver can be a lot more engaging, more hands-on – literally. At a distance, he has arrows, but up close, the fight is personal, unpredictable. Oliver isn't intimidated by his speed – it renders him virtually inert in Barry's eyes – but he's still vulnerable to it.

Unscathed, Barry pauses long enough to ask, "Had enough?"

Oliver grunts – he's gotta be bruised underneath all that leather, even if Barry's fists are feeling it, too – but he doesn't yield. "Suit yourself," Barry replies, unanswered, before rushing him again.

This time, even with Oliver slowed to a standstill, Barry senses a change. He doesn't alter his own rhythm, confident that if it could bring down a man of steel he can take down the Arrow, but Oliver doesn't fold. He lands another thirty or forty punches before his next blow meets an open palm. Startled, Barry fails to change course as the hand closes tight and twists _hard_ , an audible pop snapping his wrist out of joint.

Barry howls, pain ricocheting up his arm as he stutters to a stop. "The hell, Oliver?" he hisses, hugging his wrist to his chest.

Nonplussed, Oliver says, "You said bring my A-game." Stepping forward, he adds with typical brusqueness, "This'll hurt." Before Barry can sensibly Flash out of sight, Oliver takes his wrist in both hands and relocates it.

He almost blacks out, Oliver's hands holding his wrist steady even as the rest of his body shakes. Gritting his teeth, he doesn't jerk out of his hold or sock him in the jaw, appealing as it sounds. Oliver switches a two-handed grip to one, fishing in a pocket and producing a portable ice pack. "For real?" Barry can't help but ask.

Oliver ignores him, cracking the ice pack in half to activate it before pressing it against Barry's still-captive wrist. Barry grunts, tugging on his arm half-heartedly, but Oliver's grip holds. The pain is fading fast, but a different need for space sets in as Oliver's closeness asserts itself. The exertion on him is obvious, even if the suit masks any outward changes. He smells like sweat, like lightning marks, like a man coming home from a war. Tired and heavy and somehow stronger for it.

At last – too soon – he lets Barry's wrist go. The lightning is so attuned to the subtle current of Oliver's presence next to him that the loss of contact is like being blindfolded. Barry blinks and Oliver asks, "Ready?"

Flexing his wrist gingerly – not going to be punching with it yet – Barry nods. He doesn't Flash back to the opposite end of the warehouse, though. Close range is good. Close range brings out the sharpness in Oliver's eyes, iron, ready to hold his ground. _Be wary,_ his posture says.

Experimentally – because he can, because he wants to see what Oliver will do – Barry walks up to him at normal speed. Oliver doesn't respond immediately, evidently equally curious – _what are you doing?_ is pronounced in his arched eyebrows – but when Barry throws a slow punch, he catches it. Barry repeats the gesture with the same result. Over and over and over, Oliver unfailingly stops him from reaching his target. He maintains the speed but increases the force, gaining confidence that Oliver won't break his hand if Barry lets him catch it, even if it lands with a louder _thump_ into that leather palm.

It's a trust test, he realizes, as Oliver doesn't let his hand go, like a jaguar with its teeth around a kill. _You know what I can do_ , it says, releasing him. Letting him try, try again.

At human speeds, Oliver could – should – destroy him. But he doesn't. Because he knows the second he tries, Barry will speed up and wipe the floor with _him_.

It's like boxing, except Oliver doesn't offer guidance or distraction, just letting him figure out his own rhythm. Every so often – unexpectedly, unpredictably – Oliver's hand closes on his fist, holding it in place, throwing Barry's balance off. He'll give a little push to drive Barry back, the unspoken message becoming clearer and clearer even as the pattern fails to emerge.

 _You're complacent._

He maintains his speed, his rhythm exactly, aware of the almost painfully obvious vulnerability, before abruptly breaking rank. He lands two solid punches with his left hand instead of one, Oliver's response quick and on his feet, landing a punch of his own. The adrenaline is like a drug, it burns so low, crowding Barry closer as he tries to undermine Oliver's wall of strength.

It would be easy to run, to hurt him, to kill him, even – lightning can be lethal to humans – but he keeps himself in check. Pushing as far as he can against _Oliver_ , not the Arrow, he feels the game shift as Oliver catches his fist and delivers a jab of his own to Barry's ribs. Barry skirts the next attempt with Speed, torn between a quick KO and the resistance of all that contained strength pushing back against him.

He goes for the former and receives the latter, almost knocking himself out when Oliver's forearm smashes into his face. It doesn't make sense – _he shouldn't be able to see me_ – but Oliver knows where he'll be before Barry even starts to move. Dazed and off guard, he fails to step back before Oliver empties a syringe into his shoulder.

Flashing back, he wobbles, tipping out of Speed Force to stare at the capsizing ground. Turning around, he watches two Olivers sway, darkness crowding the edges of his vision. Oliver draws another arrow on him and he Flashes out of range just in time. Refusing to give Oliver a second opportunity, Barry Flashes forward and sweeps his legs out from under him.

Oliver hits the ground hard, breath driven out of him in an explosive grunt. Barry doesn't give him a chance to get up, straddling him and holding his shoulders down. Gasping with the effort of staying conscious, he hunches, feeling – stabilizing? – hands at his elbows. "Don't throw up on me," Oliver entreats, startling a breathless laugh from Barry.

"No promises," he grunts, nausea twisting in his gut. "Your fault."

Oliver rolls his eyes and tightens his grip before the world tips and Barry's back hits the concrete.

"H'oh god," he mumbles, reaching up to press both hands against his eyes. Oliver's weight disappears as Barry rolls onto his side and dry-heaves, trying to purge a drug he can't reach. Curling up, he flinches when he feels a hand on his shoulder, half-expecting an accompanying syringe.

"You okay?" Oliver asks, crouching next to him. The concern in his voice is unmistakable.

It's a whisper in the back of his mind: _You're complacent._

It's over in less time than it takes Oliver to blink – Barry has him pinned to the wall, weapons discarded, arm pressed against his throat. He can see the lightning in his own eyes reflected in Oliver's, aware that he could break Oliver's neck in a second. Speed compensates strength.

Oliver doesn't say _I surrender,_ doesn't fight at all, waiting until Barry's grip slackens, his posture hunching inward. Speed may compensate strength, but it only counteracts sedation so far. Barry stands his ground, straightening his shoulders when Oliver steps towards him.

Without a word, Oliver slides an arm under his shoulders, keeping him upright. "That was a half-dose," Oliver explains. Barry leans against him without actively intending to, dragging his feet a little when Oliver walks forward. "One thousand milligrams of horse tranquilizer."

Barry blows out a breath. "I don't remember the first dose," he admits. "Or," he corrects, frowning and pressing his fist against his forehead – burgeoning headache, _ow_ – "I repressed it really, really well."

"Try to repress this one," Oliver suggests. Barry groans. "C'mon. I'll buy you a burger."

"You better buy me a lot of burgers," Barry grunts. Eating is the last thing on his mind, but Oliver has the right idea: dilution. "I had you," he adds.

"Uh huh." It's not an admission.

"I had you," Barry repeats. "I won."

Oliver lets him go. He hits the floor.

Putting a foot on his chest, Oliver says, "Nice job, champ." He walks before Barry can paw his ankle for a proper grip to yank him down, leaving Barry to heave himself to his feet.

"It was a tie," he grunts, stumbling on his feet. "I could've – I had you."

"We have a very different definition of _had you_ ," Oliver calls without turning to him, recovering his bow and quiver. "Vary your rhythm. Strike first, strike fast, strike _hard_. Play dirty. Incapacitation is surrender, nothing less. Pressure points, tendons, joints – your opponent won't show you a soft belly. Watch body language – if you can't see something, it's a threat."

Barry blinks, foggy concentration refusing to yield perfect recall. "Anything else?"

Oliver turns to him. "Improvisation. For someone as fast as you are, you're not very quick on your feet."

Barry huffs, closing the distance between them. When Oliver hooks an arm under his shoulders again, he should mistrust it. Instead, he relaxes into it, letting Oliver lead the way.

"It was a tie," Oliver allows under a sky full of stars. Barry looks at him, eyebrows up. "Next time," he adds seriously. "It won't be."

"Next time?" Barry echoes hopefully.

"Next time," Oliver confirms.

"We going to invite the others?" Barry asks.

He feels Oliver's laugh against his chest. "No."

"They'd love it," Barry reminds him.

Oliver lets him go, climbing on his motorcycle and pulling the helmet on. "Race you," he deflects, engine revving.

 _Where?_ Barry wonders but does not ask, watching him drive off.

Central City is where he should be – and in a night's time he will be there, sleeping in his own bed, surrounded by his own city – but Oliver's city calls to him. Because it's Oliver's. Because it's _Oliver._

Decided, he follows Oliver home.


	2. Trusted

Oliver maintains a certain amount of personal space.

Three points drive home the reason for it: five years with virtually no hugs did not irreparably damage him; far too many people have left permanent scars on him; and physical closeness is an intimacy as painful as it is pleasurable, leaving him vulnerable to other people. He doesn't like being vulnerable to other people. Too often, vulnerability is too much trust, trust misplaced, trust unquestioned.

Barry has it in spades.

Whereas Oliver sleeps privately, preferably under deep cover of darkness when no one else is awake to contest his level of awareness, Barry makes himself cozy in public spaces. He has no qualms with falling asleep when others are awake, unlike Oliver, who refuses to be the first guard to take off his gun. He trusts people – any person, it seems, no matter how dubious their smiles are – to not hurt him. He sleeps with a soft underbelly facing up, like he's waiting for someone to kill him.

Oliver wants to put him on guard, to make him understand that one day he will trust the wrong person, who will throw him into a place Oliver can't rescue him from, and they will torture him. They will render his kindness inert, his optimism obsolete. They will dim the joy in his smile and the light in his eyes. They will do everything in their power to destroy him.

Oliver knows it will because he remembers what it was like to see himself in a full-length mirror for the first time in five years. He saw himself reflected in the glassy windows of his hospital room and stared, mesmerized, at his own body. Once he overcome the initial shock, he noted the differences: he was stronger, had a better posture, and filled his frame more fully. He had a soldier's steady stance, at attention even at rest. Most importantly, he did not meet the expectation of a starved, beaten castaway. Somehow, rather than taking away, the island had given him strength.

The scars reinforced that image. _You are not the person you were before the island_ , they said. _You will never be that person again._ He was the person who survived. Everything and anything.

The strength was misleading.

It masked pain.

Oliver maintains a certain amount of personal space. That rule does not apply after two in the morning.

The stairs do not creak underfoot – Oliver knows them too well to make such a casual mistake – but Barry still stirs on the couch when he reaches the living room. Sitting up with fuzzy-haired sleepiness, Barry asks through a yawn, "Ollie? What's wrong?"

 _Nothing_ , he half-wants to say, _go back to sleep_.

Keep him in the dark. Let him live a peaceful lie.

But Barry doesn't live a peaceful lie, not anymore: the lightning strike changed him. For him fighting crime used to be a day job; now it's an inescapable fact of his life and the stakes couldn't be higher for him. When he regards Oliver, he's tired, but he's alert, becoming more so by the second.

"Ollie?" he repeats, climbing to his feet ponderously. The horse tranquilizers were a low blow, to be sure, but there were no rules against leveling the playing field. Oliver would never say it out loud, but speedsters were a real threat to him: he couldn't underestimate them. Give Barry the full benefit of his powers and he could crush Oliver. By taking an opportunity to weaken him, Oliver gained an opportunity to take him down. Only then did the game become winnable.

"Your thoughts are so _loud_ ," Barry grunts, peevishly but not unpleasantly tired, more come-back-to-bed than shut-up-or-else. He walks – stumbles – over and catches Oliver's sleeve. "C'mon," he insists, dragging him back to the couch, and Oliver could break free at any moment but he's curious and hungry enough for another human being's presence that he doesn't fight him.

Besides, he acknowledges, albeit not freely, as Barry cuddles down into the couch cushions and he settles beside him, it's nice. He slept with a lot of people not only to fulfill a different need but to receive that irresistible shot of dopamine. Nature's very own _be nice to other humans_ drug.

Barry must have it in abundance, he thinks, too tired himself to care as he settles on top of him, mostly crushing him. Barry talks about chemistry a lot when they're down in the lab. Foundry. Cave. _Whatever_. He knows about dopamine. And he must know exactly how dangerous it is to be vulnerable, given his line of work, and yet, contradictorily, he retains the inherently rewarding trust-people attitude with the more rigorous be-careful lifestyle.

Barry pushes him around a little, whimpering once when Oliver plants an elbow in his lower gut, eliciting a quiet _Sorry_. With an unintelligible mumble, Barry forgives him. He forgives everyone, Oliver thinks, even those people who shoot him in the back with two arrows to prove a point.

Better scraped knees than closed coffins, Oliver thinks. Painful though it might be, he'd much rather Barry learn the most difficult lessons under a controlled environment than in actual combat.

"Dude, you gotta turn your brain off," Barry says huskily. "Even it's gotta rest sometimes."

"You should mind your own business," Oliver suggests, stupid with sleep.

"You are my business," Barry replies.

Oliver's stomach hurts. "Go to sleep," he responds, quiet, deflective.

Eyes closed, Barry fires back, "You first."

Oliver waits thirty-seconds, feeling the steady rise and fall of Barry's chest precipitate closer and closer to sleep until he's out, unresponsive to the light prod Oliver gives his ribs. _Bar,_ it tries. When nothing changes, Oliver rubs slow circles against Barry's side, relaxing with all the speedster heat around him. It's hard _not_ to feel relaxed around Barry, he reflects groggily. He's a personal space heater. Whose greatest ambition in life is to make friends and save people, mutually incompatible goals.

 _They don't have to be._

Lian Yu is not every man's island, just as Oliver's life need not be Barry's.

 _You can be better_ , Oliver told him once.

 _You can inspire people in a way I never could._

Pillowing his head on Barry's chest, Oliver thinks, _Go back to bed_ , but leaving Barry means leaving his warmth, his sanity, and his unconditional trust behind.

 _Go back to sleep_ , he amends, closing his eyes and exhaling slowly.

The bruises hurt, but he knows Barry is hurting, too, and still the most comfortable place to be is with him.

He'll slip past a woozy Barry's hold around sunrise, well before Thea comes downstairs and finds only one person on the couch, but for now, he lets sleep – however fleeting, however _good_ – claim him.


	3. Trust Barrier

Their lives don't intersect again for three months.

Barry builds speed and from what he hears Oliver builds strength, honing natural talents against more rigorous opponents. The Reverse Flash becomes an all-consuming adversary: no amount of ordinary paperwork can adequately distract Barry. He sits at his desk and looks up at the window compulsively, on edge, half-expecting to see a yellow-suited figure standing on the opposite rooftop. He can't convince himself even mundane noise is meaningless, jerking around whenever an officer walks by the crime lab to drop off more evidence. His pile grows staggering. Around noon, Singh takes notice, barking, _I want those reports by three, Mr. Allen._

Speed-reading requires intense concentration, a halting focus that only passes once he drops out of Speed Force. He can't sustain it, going in spurts, zipping through fifty pages of reports before frustration will drive him once more to the window. He'd press his hands against the glass if he thought it would make a difference, scour every inch of the city if he thought it would help find the Reverse Flash. But he knows that it won't.

Because the Reverse Flash is much, much faster than him.

When he first woke up from the coma and realized what he could _do_ , he'd thought his days of fighting for peace were over. He could run faster than the speed of sound; _nobody_ could keep up with him. Not even the legendary vigilante could stop him now. He was the most powerful person in Central City. He could do the impossible.

Then he met other metahumans who, lacking Speed, compensated with strategy. They crushed him, again and again and again. They branded their powers into his skin, heat and cold and steel. Lichtenstein marks trace invisible scars across his torso, healed over but scarcely forgotten, a parting gift from the particle accelerator and Farooq. The electricity to regain his Speed would have killed him, had they hypothesized incorrectly, but instead it only caused temporary, excruciating pain. Story of his life: one survivable event after another, however unpleasant.

Most of them should have killed him: The Mist, Blackout, and Captain Cold and Heat Wave all used strategies that proved lethal to ordinary humans. Weather Wizard was scarcely better, survivable only with an asterisk; Barry still hadn't wrapped his head around the concept of a true _parallel universe._ It had diverged so sharply from the expected outcome ( _tsunami, Joe,_ Iris) that he couldn't help but think he might never meet _those_ people again, might never fully share a history with them.

They could look and act and talk like the people he knew that day, but Captain Singh never threw himself in the line of fire for Joe, Iris never professed her feelings for him in a heat-of-the-moment burst, and Mark Mardon never had an opportunity to mortally endanger Central City. They were different, almost diluted versions of the people they were in that intense moment: they lacked existential fear, existential power.

They hadn't been burned.

Barry had.

He drops the folder on Captain Singh's desk at 2:58 PM.

Then he runs six hundred miles to see a friend.

. o .

Felicity finds him first.

" _Barry?"_

He jerks, skidding to a halt on the pavement and reaching up with a hand reflexively to tap his comm. "Felicity?" he asks.

" _This is why I need a code name,_ " she responds. " _What are you doing here?_ "

Barry thinks, _I needed to see Oliver._ A blush creeps over his neck. Saying it out loud is scarcely less embarrassing: _I got overwhelmed and needed him._

"I was – in town," he says haltingly. "I heard there was – another vigilante?"

It sounds weak even to himself. He hears a wrapper crinkle and then Felicity speaks around a lollipop. " _You're a worse liar than he is_."

He huffs, about to contradict it when he hears an arrow _snick_ as it's drawn back. The hairs on the back of his neck rise, a spot just below his shoulder burning warningly. He never hears the bow release, it's so quiet; he darts out of reach, heart pounding, and feels the arrow nick the suit. Whirling, he scans the street for the other archer, reaching back instinctively to touch the cut. Not bad. It'll heal in seconds.

He can't hear or see the other archer, Flashing to the opposite end of the street – _confront it head-on_ – before freezing in place.

" _Barry?_ " Felicity asks. His head hurts, attention so focused on finding his would-be assassin that his vision blurs when he scans the nearby windows. Except it keeps blurring, even after he stops searching, and instinct kicks in.

He bolts, drawing the lightning as close to the surface as he can. It's a burn in his lungs and a fire under his skin. A fast heart rate circulates toxins faster, but he needs to get rid of the poison before he succumbs to it. He can barely breathe, but he doesn't dare stop until the drop-dead blackout pressure is gone.

Then he skates to a halt, gasping for breath, holding onto a brick wall for support. The cut on the back of his shoulder stings like hell, but he can feel his strength returning. _You're not gonna die_ , he tells his frantic heartbeat. _You're okay._

He hears the scuff of boots on pavement, shoulders relaxing despite the tension in them because _Oliver_. The Flash recognizes him before Barry does, the Speed Force detecting the familiar aura Oliver projects. Turning, Barry sees that he isn't wearing his suit. He also knows Oliver could walk silently, has seen it before, but he walks with purpose, crunching gravel.

"What are you doing here?" he asks in a low voice, dragging Barry by the forearm to a dark corner. "You shouldn't be here."

Pain stabs Barry's chest – _Oliver –_ because he can't bear the thought that Oliver isn't the same Oliver. Then the gruff demeanor vanishes, something in Barry's expression giving away his condition, because Oliver is frowning and looking him over like he can see the nuances of the suit in the dark. "What happened?" he asks, running his hands almost gently down the seams of Barry's arms, searching.

Barry shivers, reflexively stepping back and wincing when his back hits the wall. "I'm fine," he says stupidly. Oliver _uh-huhs_ , grabbing him by the shoulder and turning him. He hisses and Barry wonders if the cut looks as sharp and hot as it feels. "It's not safe for you here," he says, letting go.

Barry twists, turning to face him – it's harder to make out his features under the shadows but it doesn't matter – because he needs to say it: "You're here."

"I've also been doing this for eight years," Oliver responds. He's close enough that Barry can almost feel the words, suddenly, painfully tempted to hug him. _Give him space. You don't know what this Oliver is like._ "You've been doing it for eight months."

Hurt occludes politeness. "I wanted to see you." _I missed you._

Oliver sighs, taking him by the upper arms and repeating firmly, "What happened?"

 _Don't tell him,_ Barry thinks. He's already seen the effects it's had on his close friends, attempting to recreate the old timeline. He can't risk Oliver's friendship, too. Of all the constants in the world, he can only hope Oliver remains one of them. "I can't tell you," he says at last.

Oliver holds on for a moment longer, gauging his truthfulness. Evidently satisfied, he lets Barry go. Barry is suddenly, irrationally tempted to lie to him.

 _Stay. Please._

Then Oliver says quietly, "Foundry."

He walks off. Barry gives him a head start, resisting the urge to follow. Waiting until he's sure Oliver is out of sight, Barry takes off, startling Felicity out of her seat as Dig puts a gun on him. Holding his hands up in silent surrender, he says, "Sorry."

"We need to get you a bell," Dig says, holstering his gun as Felicity pulls herself off the floor. "Something big, and loud."

"Cowbell?" Felicity suggests.

Dig grunts, stepping forward to clasp his hand. "Good to see you."

"You too, Dig," Barry replies, letting his hand go in time to catch Felicity's hug. "Hey."

"Stop scaring me," she says against his shoulder, voice slightly muffled. "We already lost you once."

Barry hugs her back gently. "You won't lose me again," he promises.

It's been almost an hour since Oliver and he parted ways, Felicity and Dig grilling him on metas, before Oliver shows up, carrying a stack of pizza boxes. "You're lucky I have a reputation," Oliver grunts, setting six on a table and passing the remaining box to Dig and Felicity. "Eat up."

"I want your reputation," Barry says, popping open a lid and devouring three slices in quick succession. Eyes almost rolling back in his head in pleasure, he sinks into a chair and props his feet up on the table. "Best thing about Speed? Everything tastes better on an empty stomach."

Oliver pushes his feet off the table in one fluid motion, walking over to his suit rack and undoing his tie. "You wanna tell me the real reason you're here?" Oliver asks, oblivious to the sudden dryness in Barry's mouth as he watches him shrug out of his jacket.

 _Nothing in my world makes sense except you,_ Barry wants to say, stuffing a slice of pizza in his mouth instead. He almost chokes on it when Oliver unbuttons his shirt, turning his back on him deliberately to regain his composure. _So we're still comfortable with each other,_ he thinks, a mix of relief and shyness sweeping over him.

When he turns back, Oliver is already suited up, finishing the straps on his boots. His own feet ache a little – six hundred miles does that to a person, even a speedster; they'll take a few hours to heal – but he still stands when Oliver straightens. Oliver looks at him, assessing, before turning his attention to Felicity and Dig.

Felicity says sternly, "Oliver."

Oliver shoulders his bow. "Not tonight," he says quietly. Barry suspects he isn't meant to hear it.

Felicity pushes back: "You are not going to do this."

"Oliver?" Barry prompts.

Oliver glares at them both. _Stand down_. "Not tonight," he repeats firmly.

Dig says, "Dammit, Oliver, we're not _sidekicks._ This isn't a negotiation."

"You're right," Oliver growls. "It's not."

There's a dangerous undercurrent to his tone. They've fought like this before, Barry can tell. Over what, he can't guess, but they've stood at odds like this before.

 _What're you hiding?_ he wonders. _What am I missing?_

Oliver looks at him and Barry averts his gaze, afraid that Oliver will read the same questions in his own eyes.

 _What're you hiding?_

 _What am I missing?_

Something too big to share, read the lines in Oliver's jawline and the lightning underscoring Barry's eyes.

Oliver walks out without another word, leaving the three of them in silence. For a moment, Barry thinks they'll break and tell him what's going on.

Then they drop the masks, shutting him out as they talk. It's like they forget he's there, gearing up – for Felicity, sliding into a seat behind a computer, for Dig, pulling on Kevlar – as Barry shifts back, giving them space.

 _Get out_ , the tension says, _you're not part of this family._

He Flashes off before either of them can stop him, retreating to the one place where he knows he's sane and safe and welcome: Speed Force.


	4. Quid Pro Quo

It's a lot to ask. Too much to ask of a friend.

 _Hopefully, none of this will come to pass, but if it does – I need a favor from you._

But Oliver Queen – _Al Sah-him_ – has no choice.

 _I need something from you._

" _Oliver,_ " Barry says, hesitating on the other end of the phone. " _I – things with – Dr. Wells have – escalated._ "

Oliver thinks, _Barry, I have no time._

He makes it: "I'll help you with him. What do you need?"

Barry's exhale is caught between relief and uncertainty. " _Ollie … what's going on?_ "

 _It's a long story._ "I'll explain everything soon," he says instead, very quietly. _Presuming I'm still alive._

Barry seems to sense it, but he only pushes back with, " _I'll hold you to that._ " Then, all business, he asks, " _You'll help with Wells?_ "

There's a sharpness in his voice that makes Oliver pause. _What the hell happened between you?_ Barry had been nothing but a profuse source of praise for the Great Man. Oliver had had misgivings, but they'd been unfounded. Yet his gut instinct had saved him more times than he could count, and the bad vibe he received from Wells – _there is something off about that man_ – couldn't be ignored.

"Give me a time and place," is all Oliver says.

. o .

The something-off is surprisingly easy to quantify.

Wells is a speedster.

Arrow notched, he watches the two speedsters chase tail. "Move, Barry," he growls, willing his eyes to detect more substantial differences than the red and yellow light. He knows Barry's lightning is yellow ( _knows it like his own name, his own heartbeat_ ), and he can almost see the outline of the man, but one false move could just as easily kill Barry as it could Wells. Afraid for him – _you're not a fighter; you're a flier, a runner, more archer than soldier_ – Oliver shouts, "Barry, move!"

He gets his window: Wells – the Reverse Flash – smashes Barry against the wall. Firestorm takes off – where, Oliver doesn't know – but he takes aim as Wells throws Barry into the glass STAR Labs' logo. Barry smashes into the glass as Oliver's arrow takes flight, sinking through Wells' leg. Firestorm launches a fireball and Wells retaliates with a blast of wind, sending Barry into flight after his catapulted comrade.

Satisfied, Wells turns from his two combatants to the last man standing. _Al Sah-him._ "Nanites," Oliver explains when Wells yanks the arrow from his calf. "Courtesy of Ray Palmer. They're delivering a high-frequency pulse that's disabling your speed. You're not gonna be running around for quite a while."

Wells doesn't back down, casting the arrow aside and rushing Oliver. Experienced fighters both, neither gives ground. Oliver keeps up a relentless assault, denying Wells a chance to regroup. Even when Wells smashes a pole into him, he fails to do any significant damage, permitting Oliver to fling him onto his back on a heap of construction leftovers.

He reaches for an arrow as Wells blurs into nonexistence, shaking off the nanites as Barry once shook off the horse tranquilizer Oliver shot him with. Bow drawn, he has no chance to launch his arrow before a red streak of lightning Flashes out of sight.

He's thrown forcefully against the concrete, Wells' hand locked around his throat with crushing force. " _The history books say you lived to be eighty-six years old, Mr. Queen,_ " Wells snarls in that deep, preternatural warble. _What the hell are you talking about?_ crosses Oliver's mind but not his lips; he can't breathe, let alone speak, with that hand locked around his throat. " _Well I guess the history books…"_ raising a vibrating hand, Wells finishes, " _are wrong_."

The hand descends, dangerously close to his chest, and Oliver entreats the Speed Force, _Bring me back my speedster._

His very own bolt of lightning bursts from the blue, tackling Wells and relieving the pressure from Oliver's chest and throat immediately. Barry throws Wells against a dumpster, eliciting a sharp, " _Ah! That's the spirit._ " Standing in less time than it takes Oliver to blink, Wells says, " _You can't stop me, Flash. And you never will._ "

They take off and there is a small, desperate corner of Oliver's mind screaming, _Barry!_ because Barry is fast but Wells is a fighter, a seasoned one, and Barry is still –

Then the fireball _whooshes_ overhead and he has just enough time to hop on top of a car for a clear shot before Wells crashes into one across from him. The arrow slices into the meat of Wells' shoulder with a satisfying _thunk_ , bringing him down. Hopping down from his own perch, Oliver walks towards him, heartrate slowing as Barry Flashes into sight, glancing around in frantic bewilderment before he sees his quarry.

Firestorm lands and they converge on the body – _still alive; for now_ – as Barry says breathlessly, "Thanks, fellas."

"No problem," Firestorm replies.

Oliver has a strangling urge to drag Barry in for a hug, resisting it by keeping a grip on his bow. _Don't scare me like that,_ he thinks. "Nice haircut," Barry says. Oliver's eyebrows arch, jaw working for a moment before he settles on, _Not now._ It's almost refreshing to have the Hell that is his life mistaken for something resembling normalcy. "And I see we've abandoned the traditional green," he adds, an unreadable tone in his voice.

 _I liked the green_ , it seems to say.

 _I liked it, too,_ Oliver replies.

"Trying something different," he settles on, aware that the stain of black armor is a warning as much as it is a pronouncement. _Return to the League before they realize you're gone._ "Look," he says brusquely, "I might need a favor from you."

"Wherever, whenever," Barry says, flushed with joy.

 _Don't take that from him,_ Oliver thinks.

It hurts to even consider, but he must. He walks, trailing Firestorm – who, flushed with the same victory, smacks Barry with a _we-did-it!_ hand on his back – and keeping his secret tight to his chest.

 _I need you to break into the headquarters of the League of Assassins._

 _It will be heavily armed. There are no structural weaknesses; as soon as you are seen, you will be shot down. You will have ninety seconds to make the escape before the cell's trigger system locks the premises. Unless you're planning on phasing through walls, that will be your window of opportunity. Treat every arrow and knife as poisoned. Expect resistance. Get in and out as fast as you can._

" _Only way I know how_ ," Barry replies. He sounds calmer than Oliver expects – eerily so. _Don't underestimate them._ But high on his own victory, Barry isn't thinking dire consequences. He's thinking quid pro quo. " _So where exactly is this … League of Assassins?_ "

"A – friend – of mine will provide that information," Oliver says, sitting on a private flight back to Nanda Parbat. "It's too dangerous for me. I've already jeopardized a great deal calling you, but –" _If things go south, I wanted to hear from you one more time_.

He knows it's a great risk for a humble reward, but he'd have done far worse than killed if it meant the opportunity to do the same for Tommy Merlyn before that fateful evening.

 _Tommy_ , he'd say, as he has said in countless dreams since, _my best friend in life. You deserve to be happy, and I'm glad you've found that happiness with Laurel. I loved you before you were a good man; I am so proud of your success. The world will be different without you, Tommy. We'll heal, but you will be deeply missed._

He doesn't dare hint at catastrophic consequences with Barry, settling on, "Can you do it?"

He can hear Barry nod, feel him gearing up, ready to go. " _Consider it done._ "

With almost ferocious force, he tells that great unknown, _Keep him safe._ The Speed Force is unresponsive – it always has been to him, is as attuned to his energy as the Earth itself is – but Oliver senses that it isn't indifferent. He can feel it in Barry's presence, missing it in Barry's absence. The expectation is mutual.

 _Keep him safe._

. o .


	5. Nitor

_Nitor: struggle, lean, strive, stand fast, support, trust._

The Flash kneels under the weight of Central City.

Bronzed shoulders bear the burden without complaint. The Speed Force works tirelessly to close the gap between pre- and post-singularity life, supplying strength where humanity fails. It would take over a year for a single man to achieve what The Flash does in twenty-four hours, rebuilding the city. He works until his legs tremble, shoulder caught by a firefighter before he enters a collapsing building. _It's coming down anyway, Flash_.

He barely recognizes his own name, losing track of it somewhere between _there's two-hundred-and-forty people still unaccounted for_ and _Ronnie's dead_. Time passes on a different scale for him: what once dictated rest in clockwork cycles extends into an interminable night.

There's a popular saying: _even the longest days are only twenty-four hours long_. The Flash begs to differ.

That night, he ages a year. He digs men and women from the rubble of collapsed buildings and supplies the heat, the lightning under his skin wherever it is useful. He Flashes through hospitals, bottling lightning in the form of electricity, and puts barriers and other safety signs up near hazardous locations, sparring officers the trouble. He douses fires with vacuums and gently tugs kids too young to spell their address up onto his hip, holding them like they're his until he finds an officer to take over.

 _What's your name?_ he'll ask with human compassion and Speed Force certainty. They latch onto him, sometimes two, three at a time, holding his hands and monkeying onto his back. He never runs out of space for them, picking up a two-, ten-, or twelve-year-old whenever he finds one in need. Holding onto them, he wills the lightning to be kind, and it is, exceedingly so, even when he runs.

By the time the sun brightens the horizon, his extremities shake and his emotions will not come, driven deep below the surface. He feels husked out, hollowed, like there is no one underneath the suit. It's easier to be The Flash than anyone else. The Flash doesn't have a separate identity from the lightning. He is an icon, not a man; someone who acts but does not react.

There is no time for rest. When he walks into Jitters, still masked, to confirm a glimpse of trouble caught on a TV screen, he stares, agape, at the silent screen. The news arrives in fast, broken torrents: Starling City under lockdown, biohazard, all routes in and out blocked, rumors of government action underway. Sightings of the Arrow emerge, but the world slows to stillness before he can see the next segment.

Looking around, he stares at the frozen people, several looking right at him, two discretely holding their phones up. He walks over – in real time he runs at imperceptible speed, but he lives in Speed-time and Speed-time is _glacial_ – and tilts the phones down, ensuring no sharp images will emerge. He doesn't mind the public awareness, but he knows how easily an identity can be linked to a good body shot. _Head low_ , he thinks, staring at the screen one last time before Flashing out, sending every napkin and unsecured paper flying. _Sorry_.

He tries to run, but the lightning burns the soles of his feet, the muscles in his calves. He works up to a jog, breath coming in painful gasps, but the exertion slows him to stillness in seconds. The Speed Force preserves the frozen world, permitting him to walk in Speed-time, but he cannot run, chained to the magnetic floor of the world.

Every day human beings overcome the entire gravitational force of the Earth to stand up. The Flash moves in similarly extraordinary terms, lunging across incalculable distances with the aid of Speed Force. But humans have limits, and living in Speed time is only permissible indefinitely in Speed Force itself; on Earth, it's only a matter of time before, like gravity, it all comes crashing down.

Exhaling lightning, visible clouds of reddish heat, he halts and hunches over his knees. To an observer, he might look vaguely demonic, yellow lightning outlining his concaved back, smoking soles complemented those sharp red breaths. They love the human with Speed, but they've never met the monster, not like he has.

Time wraiths are Speed. He – humble human _he_ – is not Speed. A companion, burning with it, stabilizing it, entrenching it in his very soul, but at the end of the day all too fully human.

 _How the mighty have fallen_ , he thinks, securing a largely undetectable sight by a dumpster for himself as blackness overtakes his vision. Reaching for his comm, he tries to press it, waiting for the barely audible _click_ that indicates it's on. The click never comes, and he watches a piece of paper pinwheel, almost comically, in his still-settling wake.

 _On your own_ , the tumbleweed sings.

He holds onto consciousness by sheer force of will, emptying his stomach twice over. The paper suddenly flies across the street and sounds – an abundance, an overwhelming orchestra of _sounds_ – bursts into his mind. He can hear the sirens and the emergency crews, the creaking, groaning buildings, the off-center rhythm of a city kept up past reprieve and settling into a new, sleepless morning. Hauling himself to his feet, he thinks, _Starling City._

His feet will not take him there. No train will, either, he surmises, and all flights to and from the city are grounded. A car would take almost a day to travel that far, and the blockade ensures he wouldn't get closer than ten miles. He could hoof it on a horse if he had a month to spare, but upon arriving he would lack a cause to champion in a decimated city. Desperation drives him to _try_ to run, pushing himself twenty miles out before he cannot even tap into Speed Force, completely shut out from that pulsing energy as human exhaustion – human heart, human lungs, human legs – overrides it.

When he presses the comm this time, he gets a response almost immediately. Breathless, barely audible, he asks, "Cisco?"

No response. Pressing again, he tries, "Cisco." Unbroken silence. Head swimming with hunger, sitting in the grass – _don't sit or you'll never rise again_ – he clicks the comm on and asks, "STAR."

The comm clicks back. " _Mr. Allen?_ "

 _Professor Stein._ "Where's Cisco?" he asks, trying to force himself back onto his feet. If he passes out here he might go into worse than _total metabolic failure_.

" _I haven't seen him._ "

It's futile, but he still tries: "Cait?"

" _From what I have gathered, she has taken a leave of absence_ ," Stein replies. " _Is something wrong?_ "

Even pressing the mic button is exhausting. "I need … some … off … offset … effects…"

" _Are you all right, Mr. Allen?"_

He tries again, Speed-slurring the words. "Stein … 'm out … 'm out …"

" _If you are in distress, please give a yes or no response,_ " Stein says, infuriatingly oblivious.

Cisco would know, Cait would know. Hell, _Ollie_ would know.

 _Ollie._

Out loud, he grinds out _yes_ as clearly he can.

" _There should be a tracker in your suit,_ " Stein says, nonreactive. Keys click in the background—Stein left the comm line open. " _This system is abysmally difficult to navig—ah, here we are._ " He can almost hear Stein squinting at the screen. " _You're not within city limits._ "

He staggers towards them, like he's hypothermic instead of hypoglycemic: _keep walking, keep walking._

" _Stay where you are,_ " Stein advises, " _and I'll be there in thirty minutes. Give or take._ "

 _I can't wait that long_.

Even giving rather than taking, his heart will stop first.

Torn between two cities – scarcely outside of Central but a world away from Starling – he crumples in the dust.

The suit's readings plunge and he blacks out.

. o .

He's only half-conscious of a man grabbing him under the arms and dragging him a short distance.

The _thunk_ of a metal truck door opening tries to penetrate the fog around him, but it's dull, distant, happening to someone else. All of it happens to someone else, he concludes, watching the screenplay unfold as red boots are hauled after him into a van. He hears indistinguishable chatter as the door shuts with another indistinct _thunk_ , the rev of an engine disconnected from its source.

They drive for hours, it seems, sound blurring in and out of existence as Speed attempts to compensate suffering, rushing through it by slowing it down. Speed-time is being painfully aware of every laboring breath from ideation to actualization, heaving red oxygen into his lungs that threaten to break with every repetition, aware of a th- _thump_ heartrate like a slow drummer's sonata.

The orchestral discomfort swells when they come to a halt, a different set of hands – big, familiar, _Joe_ – heaving him out of the van without effort. He thinks, _How much time have I lost?_ He cannot give it voice; he is an observer, not a participant.

His connection with reality stutters, breaking up into disparate pieces. There is a gray realm where he cannot understand what they are saying, lost in a pitching sea of Speed and reality. A crisp, hyper-clear space provides no clarity; he flexes Flash's gloves with no connection to them, aware of the stage and the strings and nothing in between.

Finally, there is the grounded and the real, which begins and ends with his feet skating to a halt on Starling City turf, forty-eight hours since the lockdown was initiated.

. o .

The eerie silence that greets him slows his steps. He looks around, still cast in his brilliant phoenix red, standing out like a flare in the dark. Central is children and _hey Flash_ from firefighters; Starling is casualties and dead silence from the earth. Heart in his throat, he searches for survivors.

Entering the heart of the city, he finds them in multitudes, gathered in the streets, dazed and wandering. Approaching them, he asks, _Are you okay?_ over and over and over. Some grab onto him, holding his arms; others recoil, backing away; one fires a bullet at him that never touches base. _Are you hurt?_ he asks them, unable to believe the visual evidence, needing secondary clues.

This isn't the apocalypse he expected. They're scared, but they're not hurt. They rear, but they don't attack. He can smell fire somewhere and lets it guide him towards the epicenter.

Still wearing the black suit, the Arrow stands on top of a car, shouting at the masses converged at his feet: " _We are stronger than this_."

He shifts forward, tidal, drawn, a wave to the moon. " _We are better than this_ ," the Arrow growls, certitude ringing in every word.

 _We are better than this,_ echoes in his chest, meeting the crowd. They shuffle, continuous, schooling, amassing, rather than barricading. Welcoming, even, the scarlet speedster in their midst.

" _We will not them take our hope,_ "the Arrow thunders, " _we will not let them break us down. We are_ _ **stronger**_ _than_ _ **this.**_ "

The Arrow looks Flash dead in the eye, halting him in place, and other eyes are drawn towards him now, but he only says, " _Together, we will fight them. And we will always win. We are a_ _ **city**_ _of_ _ **heroes.**_ "

There is no lightning in the Arrow's eyes or true thunder in his voice, but he wears the mantle of authority with king-like composure. _Follow me_ , his stance says, _I know the way._

At the end of the day, The Flash grows weary for the world, but the Arrow – the Arrow grows stronger.

The Flash steps through the parting crowd. Something flashes in Arrow's eyes, and for a moment he sees dismissal. Then Arrow says in that deep, unwavering tone, _Flash_.

It sends a thrill through him comparable only to Speed Force, a bridge between leader and servant. _Look at you_ , it says. _Trusted one._

The Arrow carries on even as The Flash lives up to his namesake, vanishing from the crowd before they can follow.

Hours pass as he stands on a familiar rooftop. He knows a city waits for him, six hundred miles away, but he can't bring himself to move. _I can make no speeches_ , he thinks at them, sitting on the edge of the world. _I can offer no guidance. I am not your leader. I am only your servant. Let me be._

The gravel crunches underfoot as the Arrow lands on the roof. "I didn't think you'd come," he says, sounding triumphant.

"Where else would I be?" Flash replies, staring out over the world. The happy shadow kingdom stands tall below, the somber golden city struggling on the distant horizon.

He feels a gloved hand on the back of his shoulder, and he knows the suit is damaged, burned and broken and bruised, but the hand doesn't jerk away. It flattens, and he turns into it, needing to trust the promised strength.

 _I don't know how to be a hero,_ he says, meeting that unwavering gaze, the black hood pushed back, Oliver's eyes alone looking at him.

The hand lifts from his shoulder and meets its opposite on either side of his face, holding the red cowl. Oliver's thumbs tuck under his mask, prompting him to close his eyes. The cowl comes off with no resistance. He shivers a little, surprised at how much easier he can _breathe_ without it. No resistance on the bridge of his nose or band clamped to the underside of his jaw. Oliver's hands frame his face, centering but not strangling.

 _Wear a mask_ , Oliver once counseled him, throwing his own advice back at him.

 _But don't wear it forever_ , his hands say now, warm and real against his face where armor cannot be.

He looks at Oliver and his eyes are dark, human, without lightning to burn between them.

Letting go, Oliver captures his suit instead, the side of it, a clamp that's powerful enough to tear, he suspects, but it only reels him in, pulling him against that cool strength.

"I've got you, Barry," is all he says. "I've got you."


	6. Confido

**Author's Notes:** **Takes place right around 'Legends of Yesterday' and ends mid-Season 2 of 'Flash' and mid-Season 4 of 'Arrow.'**

 **Enjoy!**

 _Confido: Trust, depend, confide in._

It's risky. Anyone could find him.

But maybe he doesn't care about being found. He is, after all, Oliver Queen, a man with a reputation.

And after his fight with Felicity, he doesn't know where else to turn. He needs something to take the ache out of his teeth so he can focus, _sleep_. If they're going to beat Savage, he needs to be ready. He can't be if he's up all night.

The house is small and overcrowded with their teams, merged into one big family, but Oliver is careful and no one wakes up. Pushing open the door to a small, closet-like room, an unfinished guest bedroom, he finds a snoring speedster on the floor. Cisco is snoring somehow louder on the bed, arm draped over his eyes, and Oliver freezes in the doorway.

His presence triggers something because yellow eyes are looking at him through half-slitted eyelids, a questioning puff of breath never manifesting into a question. Eyes still burning gold, Barry sits up, his thin sheet pooling around his waist. _Ollie?_ an arched eyebrow asks.

Oliver doesn't need to say, _Shh_ because Barry feels it, tensing before relaxing as Oliver steps inside his turf and shuts the door. _Shh_ , he repeats without a sound, looking at Barry with a hand half-raised. _Don't move._

Barry's loud and clumsy and would certainly wake up half the house, Oliver knows, but he doesn't begrudge him; speedsters don't need to worry about stealth to surprise their prey. It's a skill that doesn't need to be in his toolbox. Reading minds evidently _is_ , however, as he watches Oliver with inquisitive but not judgmental eyes.

 _What are you doing?_ he seems to ask.

Oliver crouches and folds his legs underneath himself on the floor. _Hi,_ he says, one finger held to his mouth warningly. _Don't wake them up._

Barry blinks, those yellow-lightning eyes scarcely human but still somehow sleepy and soft and very _Barry_. He's almost cross-eyed with tiredness, Oliver realizes, wondering how many hours he's been awake now. From the little he's gathered of Barry's lifestyle, sleep is rarely on the table unless he's recovering from a grave injury. To catch him at rest at all is a surprise.

Lowering his hand, Oliver pushes his luck, lured by the lightning radiating from him in calming waves. He reaches out, resting a palm of Barry's thigh, and can feel the tiny, silent hitch in Barry's breath even as he looks down and aside. _Can I stay?_ he asks, rubbing his thumb over that impressively built muscle, unearned but deserved in a world of superhumans.

Barry's response is, as all his gestures are, equivocal: he nods. Cisco snores uninterrupted on the sheets, providing sufficient white noise for Barry's shuffling, almost shy movements. They're both stupid with sleep and Oliver feels his own gaze lose focus as Barry lowers himself back onto his side and Oliver flattens out beside him, arms folded, belly-down. It should be uncomfortable, sleeping on a hardwood floor, but it's oddly comforting. Homey, even.

He can almost hear the crickets, the waves, the sounds of trees shuffling in a slow-storm-wind on Lian Yu. He's equally aware of the encroaching danger, his ease slipping as dream blends with reality, conjuring the nightmare from the darkness. A twig snaps and his heart pounds, aware of approaching footsteps. He can almost feel an arrow burning through his shoulder and a sword screaming through his ribcage, twisting a little and then—

Then he feels a nuzzling presence at his side and his pounding headache will not allow him to open his eyes but he lifts his arm slightly to let a shivering Barry burrow against his side. _I don't get cold,_ he thinks, eyes flickering, the warmth seeping into him with welcome swiftness.

 _You're not alone,_ Barry's presence replies.

He doesn't know when the hammock of Speed Force rocks him to sleep, too, only aware of the footsteps withdrawing as speed promises strength in numbers and Barry's soft, shallow snores keep him grounded.

. o .

 _Twelve hours prior._

Barry looks at him with dark, unreadable eyes.

Oliver wants to ask, but the sorrow is so arresting he cannot find words. "Barry?" he asks at last. Even in the darkness he can see the tears well up in Barry's eyes.

He can feel the words _run, Barry_ on his tongue, itching to say it with Freudian-like impulsivity. _Run!_

There's a terrible weight to those eyes and Oliver is careful, persuading him to say it out loud – _I time-traveled, you died_ – and still not processing it fully.

They take down Savage, déjà vu rearing its head as Oliver throws his weight forward to stabilize the scepter, aware of Barry's tense and trembling form at his side, victory flushing off him in almost tangible waves of heat. Barry's relief and joy is tangible with his teammates; he hugs hard, signaling everyone that they succeeded.

His posture is tense, though, and doesn't look like success.

When they part ways in public hours later his expression is fond, cheerful, even, as he reels Oliver in for a hug. Three seconds, Oliver grants him, pulling back with his own irrepressible smile, knowing he looks like young-and-in-love which is ridiculous because he's _not_.

Maybe, a tiny, impulsive part of him argues, he wants to be.

. o .

John asks him, "What's up with Barry?"

Oliver packs up his duffel, transferring arrowheads from the couch to its many pouches. "Not sure," he replies, looking around. "Is Felicity coming or—"

"She wanted to go out for drinks with Cisco and Caitlin before they caught their train tonight," John answers, leaning back with his arms folded against the kitchen counter of their makeshift safe house. His gaze, while not unreadable, is perplexingly sharp. Like he's reading Oliver, looking for something. "Did you and Barry get in a fight?" he asks.

Years of training keep Oliver from responding with a barked laugh, a suspiciously cavalier response. "What makes you say that?" he counters. John is a perceptive man; he misses nothing.

"He was acting weird. Around you."

"Maybe," Oliver proposes, arranging arrows in his quiver, "he's upset we didn't come up with a cute nickname for Savage."

"Oliver, I'm serious."

"What do you want me to say, Dig? He's Barry. He's weird sometimes."

It feels strange to say it, almost wrong, because Barry's weirdness is his stupidly hopeful exuberance that lets him approach billionaires on a single-minded mission to find his mother's murderer. It's his shameless optimism for the unexpected and inexplicable, like they're puzzles to be solved and not anomalies to be forgotten. It's his unbroken faith in a city which watches with silent eyes, ready to crucify him at the slightest wrong turn and somehow still finding reasons to be joyful.

And that missing spark of joy, he realizes, is what he couldn't read in Barry's expression. It wasn't a new emotion; it was the absence of an old one.

Zipping up his duffel, he resolves to call Barry later, to thank him again for his help. It was a close call, and Oliver can see why he's shaken, even, from the sheer whirlwind that their plan ended up being. Even accounting for the unaccountable – _I time-traveled_ – his responses were anxious, almost frantic. _You're not getting it_ , his frustrated gestures said as he tried to explain why time travel was terrible and bad and not helpful to them.

"Talk to him," John counsels.

Oliver zips up the duffel, hitching it over his shoulder. "I will," he replies.

. o .

It would be easy to say it slips his mind.

After all, with Damien Dahrk, he has more than enough to preoccupy him. Yet he still finds time to check the news in Central City. He just doesn't find the courage to call Barry. What can he say? As time passes, it seems more absurd, and Barry's occasional brusque texts offer no indication that it's on his mind. Why bring it up?

 _There's something you aren't telling me._

Was there?

He's not a second-guesser, which is why he picks up the phone and calls and gets no answer.

The uneasy feeling twisting in his gut doesn't relent even after he convinces himself a dozen plausible reasons for Barry's unresponsiveness.

. o .

Not among the list is _captured by an evil speedster on an alternative Earth_.

If he knew, he wouldn't sleep that night at all, knowing Barry is locked up in a cold glass cage, hurting and scared.

. o .

The next time Barry visits, Oliver corners him before he leaves.

He's always been more of a face-to-face conversationalist, needing to _see_ someone to speak to them. He can't gauge emotions behind a phone. He can't find the right words without body language.

Except he can't find anything to say to Barry, rendered abruptly speechless. _Why_ seems harsh; _how_ specific, clinical. _What_ is immutable and _who_ is obvious. He knows _when_ , and he knows _where_ , too.

Barry twitches in his grip, reminding Oliver that he is literally holding Barry by the shoulders, preventing a speedster from speeding away, and he lets him go. But Barry doesn't run, just stares at him with dark eyes, like he's all burned out.

 _Don't burn out on me,_ Oliver entreats him as Felicity asks them if they're going to join them for ice cream.

Oliver thinks Barry might answer in the affirmative, tired but willing to accept the excuse, but Oliver catches him by the side of the suit before he can take more than two steps in her direction. _We need to talk_.

"We'll catch up with you later," Oliver says, tugging Barry back a step. He doesn't protest, going with it. There's a quiescence to Barry's response that aches in Oliver's chest.

Sometimes he hates how trusting Barry is because he knows there are people who would grab him and hurt him, who would use his capacity to forgive against him, who would pulverize his humanity if given half the chance. He knows _Barry_ knows, too, and yet with Promethean obstinacy he takes up the burden every day and pushes it uphill, trusting it not to crush him.

Oliver waits until they're gone. Then he says, "Come with me."

Barry follows.

. o .

There are a lot of places Oliver could take him, plenty of public private places where they could be alone in a crowd, free to speak.

He takes him home instead.

He toes off his shoes, silently inviting Barry to do the same. Barry hesitates, looking around the fancy apartment, the dark wood floors, the fireplace. Oliver shrugs out of his jacket and hooks it up on a rack, turning towards Barry and wordlessly providing the same service, feeling Barry's breath hitch when his thumbs graze his side.

 _I'm not gonna hurt you_ , he thinks, surprised at how skittish Barry is. Nudging Barry's boot with a socked toe – _take those off_ – Oliver backs off, giving him space.

Rooting around for a glass of wine – it has been a _day_ , and even with Darhk the petty criminals still manage to take the most out of him – he doesn't tense up when he hears someone come up behind him, lets Barry wrap his arms around his waist. He feels Barry's cheek against the back of his shoulder, holding onto him as Oliver lifts the glass and drinks, reaching up to rest a hand over one of the arms around his stomach.

Content to maintain the moment – and feeling the first sense of _normal_ in weeks – Oliver sips his wine, feigning ignorance but for the thumb rubbing Barry's arm. When Barry loosens his grip, Oliver sets the bottle down and turns in his grip, hugging him firmly, arms hooked under his shoulders to keep him in place. Barry doesn't fight him, doesn't squirm away, just huddles close, pushing Oliver back against the counter like he can melt into him if he just wills it enough.

"It's okay," he promises.

"You died," Barry reminds him. His voice sounds like iron, anchored to a seafloor, tired and sinking fast. "I – I watched you die, Ollie."

Oliver squeezes him gently. "I'm right here."

Barry tells his shoulder, "I can't lose you."

Cupping the back of his head, Oliver assures, "You won't."

Barry holds on tight and Oliver knows he can't make promises he can't keep, but he believes it for Barry, promises it for Barry with every reassuring sweep of his thumb: _I won't leave you._

And maybe speedsters don't like cages, but he lets Oliver hold him, a quiet challenge to the universe.

 _No one is going to take you from me._


	7. In Trust

**Author's Notes: Time jump! We pick up from our adventures in 'Legends of Yesterday' all the way to the 'Flashpoint' event, AKA 3.01 of Flash and 5.01 of Arrow.**

Flashpoint

Noun: a place, event, or time at which trouble, such as violence or anger, flares up.

Chemistry: the temperature at which an organic compound gives off sufficient vapor to ignite in air.

The multiverse does not offer blank slates.

To Flashpoint, Barry carries a world of memories. They're not as vivid as they were three months ago, but he hasn't needed to access them. The lack of reinforcement leads to natural decay. It doesn't bother him; he has new memories to contend with. His world is complete, even if his mind is still catching up. Eventually it'll be second-nature to recall events he only experienced through news articles. He'll settle in.

It'll take time to adjust to Cisco's indifference and Caitlin's nonexistent role in his life. Earning Iris' trust and affection is a long-term project, as is restoring Joe's health. Though unexpected, Wally's heroics are fundamentally sound; Barry will get used to the idea of a new Flash on the streets. He'll find a more permanent home for Eobard, preferably one he never needs to visit again, and adapt to a life with his parents.

Flashpoint feels like home. It's a quieter life, but he likes stepping out of the spotlight. Letting Wally and Iris take the lead in protecting Central City allows him to let go of the weight of the world. Physically, it's a relief.

Then the blackouts strike.

At first, they're subtle, hiccups in his day that don't bother him. They intensify rapidly, lengthening with each episode. One night while working late in the lab, he comes to his senses hunched over his desk, clutching the edges. He doesn't know what triggered the attack, but he feels shaky, exhausted, scared.

He asks Eobard and Eobard laughs at him, claiming it's the Speed Force taking back what belongs to it. _The faster you run_ , he sneers, _the faster your memories disappear._ Barry rejects the truth, heart in his throat because he will never let Eobard hurt his family again.

It doesn't matter: the amnesia worsens. Trapped in the disappearing world, Barry tries and fails to hold onto them. He can't remember the nicknames Cisco gave Tony Woodward, Farooq Gibran, or Bette Sans Souci. He forgets which officer died after Clyde and Mark Mardon attempted a daring escape in a small aircraft. He unlearns his old work ID, punching in the new one with mechanical precision. When he sleeps, he has half-finished dreams, culminating in conversations. They leave out critical details regarding the takedown of their latest metahuman, leaving him edgy and unrested. His frustrated subconscious degrades the quality of his waking performance: he can't focus on any of his work.

When he stops sleeping altogether, he visits Eobard, leaning forward on his chair like he could kill with a look. There is no one else to blame but him, the stranger from another world. Barry doesn't ask questions and Eobard offers no answers. Between them, the unbroken silence grows. Barry can feel the Reverse Flash closing in, its anti-Speed the poison to his antidote Speed. He refuses to back down, letting Eobard – _Reverse_ – gnaw vampirically at his Speed. It saps some of his strength, but Barry holds his ground, dark golden eyes fixing Eobard.

 _Take it_ , he challenges, burning brighter the longer Eobard tries to drain him. His rage is limitless. With Flash, it's lethal. _It won't save you_.

Come sunrise, he tears his gaze away from the starving speedster and stands. It's easier to Flash away than it is to walk. It doesn't matter that stopping brings with it a piercing headache. Running is living for him. He has no choice: the lightning refuses to be idle.

It would be easier to call in sick, but he shows up for work in such a state of obvious disrepair that the captain takes one look at him before saying, "Go home."

Biting back an irritable retort – _I can't_ – Barry hand-waves and talks his way into his lab, settling into a chair with a report and a stern glare.

He doesn't know when it happens, but between the fifth and fiftieth pages, he blacks out.

Coming to, he opens his eyes, head spinning. A quick glance at the clock on the wall reveals that it's been three _hours_ since he picked up the report. His hands are numb, his breath tight in his chest. Burying his fingers in his hair, he squeezes them tightly, willing coherency to return.

He retrieves nothing from the intervening time, no indication of what scale of loss he's on. How much more can he lose?

Then he starts to lose his Speed.

It should be the catalyst, but every time Barry visits Eobard he feels that terrible, clawing rage to his core. It stills the request on his lips, preventing him from making the only self-preserving decision left: _I need you to fix the timeline_. The request is clinical in his head and visceral in his mouth, an image of a kitchen knife driven through his mother's chest halting the words. Rational self-interest pleads with him to buck up. Humanity forces him to swallow it down.

Wally provides a welcome distraction, as do Iris, Cisco, and Caitlin. When Wally and he team up against The Rival, it's almost like old times: fighting metas, ridding Central City of its more dangerous criminals. Out of practice, Barry is slow and miscalculating, forgetting critical advice – _defensive, not offensive; duck and recover; vigilance, unpredictability –_ and leaving Wally defensively against Clariss' final, mortal blow.

Before Barry can respond, Joe empties a round of bullets into Clariss' chest. Wally still crumples, the wound in his abdomen nauseatingly deep. "Stay with me," Barry pleads, hands trembling as he presses them against the wound. "Stay with me, Wally."

A soft, disbelieving voice asks, "Wally?" Joe crouches down beside Barry, taking hold of his son, and Barry can feel Joe's deep paternal instinct arise for the first time since he arrived in Flashpoint. It twists something unpleasant in his gut to know it will never, ever be directed towards him. "Wally?"

STAR Labs is far, but Wally stays with them. Barry backs away, intruding in a space he doesn't belong, _you never belonged_ , and then he sinks underneath the black tide.

When he emerges, he's hunched over his knees, Iris' hand steady on his back. "Barry?" she asks. His shoulders ache as he straightens, his entire body hurting. Clariss did more damage than he cares to admit, but he still finds the presence to keep his mouth shut about it.

"I'm okay," he lies, aware that his time has run out. The storm clouds close in with the same ominous certainly as Mark Mardon's tidal wave. He can't fix it anymore. He can only run.

Eobard makes him say it and Barry will never get the taste out of his mouth.

 _I need you to kill my mother._

Eobard's smile is revoltingly pleased. "With pleasure."

Barry can't even keep his strength long enough to stay standing, reeling under the influence of a minor episode. Eobard catches him with a hand around his shoulders, scruffing him with bruising force.

"Now I get to be the hero," he observes, Flashing them out of space and time before Barry can reply.

He doesn't have to watch, but he can't shut out the sound as his mother's wails abruptly fall to barely audible whimpers. He doesn't know if there is a version of himself to tell her that it's going to be okay, can't remember how it played out the first time, can't remember _anything_ pertinent, but there's no time to confirm. Eobard grabs him hard by the nape – _it would be so easy to kill you_ – and yanks him into the time stream.

When they tumble out, Eobard lands on his feet and Barry on his knees, the hardwood porch striking them with shocking resonance. He remembers this porch, this night, this _Earth_ , and even with his bleeding heart he can feel a sense of profound relief at being _home_.

 _I made it._

Not in one piece, he observes with a shudder, aware of the miles of missing hours in his memory. The universe gave him Flashpoint, but it can take away _Flash_.

It scares him to step inside and see his family intact. He hugs Wally hard, not entirely convinced that this isn't some horribly elaborate dream. When he asks about Iris, Joe says it isn't funny, and the sinking feeling in his stomach is back. Even when Joe storms off, Wally provides no illumination, the rebuke plain in his tone.

 _How could you not know?_

Sitting on a couch that feels like home but somehow isn't, Barry stares at the carpet and asks softly, "Oh, God, what did I do?"

. o .

Felicity hasn't changed.

He secretly hoped Oliver might be at the Cave, but he's almost relieved that isn't the case. He's not sure he could look Oliver in the eye and say, _I changed your life, all of your lives_. Eobard once claimed he made Barry's life _better_ by doing the same. Barry can't say as much for the post-Flashpoint timeline.

He tries to explain it to Felicity without spelling out the worst side effects. _I don't know what I broke or how much I lost_ , he doesn't say, afraid that he would lose her if he revealed exactly how much he damaged the universe. He can't lose her, not after everything.

He gives his hand – _who's that boy with Dig?_ – and Felicity gapes at him, predictably floored.

"Dig had a daughter?"

"Baby Sara," Barry replies, hands buried in his hair, a migraine already coming on.

"Oh, my God."

He tells her the truth – _I don't know how to fix it_ – and she tells him to _try_. Trying is what he does best. She says, "Go fix it."

"Right now?"

" _Yes_."

He takes off.

. o .

It's not easy. Fifteen years of changes are a lot to reacquaint himself with. The subtler cues – Cisco's animosity, Caitlin's coolness – are even more difficult to adjust to. He's used to walking into STAR Labs with a smile, but he feels intrusive now, like he's wearing the wrong clothing to a funeral.

The external turmoil is complemented by the internal struggle as his life attempts to reset. Nothing has fundamentally changed, he tells himself. He's recouping lost ground, that's all.

It doesn't make him feel better, especially when none of the vast swaths of missing time come back to him. He hoped that being around Caitlin and Cisco would trigger the memories, that something in Iris' presence would unlock the closed door, but nothing changes. He tries to jog his memory and succeeds in driving an anvil through his skull, a migraine building to teeth-grinding proportions in seconds. He collapses into a chair and clutches his head, hunched over his stomach and hurting.

Julian enters the room at some point and asks sharply, "What's wrong with you?"

Barry doesn't reply, struggling to keep the nausea _down._

Unanswered, Julian scoffs and settles down behind his own desk. Papers shuffling, pen scratching – it's insufferable. Barry keeps himself from Flashing out of sight and drags himself to his feet instead. Staggering out, he gets enough distance and disappears in the Speed Force, reappearing at Joe's place and burying his face in the couch, hugging a pillow to the back of his head.

Painkillers won't help him and natural remedies scarcely dent a speedster's metabolism. Trying to push the throbbing pressure-pain down, he wills the lightning to do its thing instead.

. o .

Barry gets a call from Oliver at three in the morning.

" _You're awake._ "

Something about his voice relaxes the tension in Barry's chest, even though his voice is gruff when he replies, "Ollie, what—"

" _Felicity told me._ "

Barry's heart stops, wakefulness flooding his senses as he sits up in bed, warm nest abandoned. "Told you … what?" he hedges, buying time.

" _Flashpoint_."

It's against Oliver's religion to beat around the bush, Barry is certain. Petting the back of his neck with one hand, he circles, allowing, "Did she?"

" _Barry_." Even with a stern tone, his name is calming on Oliver's lips. " _Talk to me._ "

He remembers Oliver confronting him over Vandal Savage and feels a lump in his throat because he can't _remember_ what transpired over that conversation. _Did it happen here?_ He doesn't know and doesn't dare ask, but Oliver confronts his silence with quiet assurance. " _I'm not mad._ _Just tell me what happened._ "

 _We shouldn't do this over the phone_ , he thinks, craving Oliver's presence. Oliver doesn't need the salmon ladder to convey strength and stamina. He radiates it in person, a rock in a storm, immovable and unbreakable. Even the Speed Force recognizes the aura Oliver projects, a heat signature specific to his quiet mastery of his environment.

Over the phone, the tone is there, but they're speaking behind a glass wall, a situation Barry is far too familiar with. Deflecting, he says, "It's late." His voice bleeds fatigue, giving weight to the excuse.

Oliver gives him a moment before he replies, " _Okay._ " There's no judgment there, almost a curious lack thereof, but the curiosity edges into hurt. _What are you keeping from me?_

 _I can't tell you_ , Barry thinks.

Oliver doesn't see it, saying again, " _Okay._ " Then he adds, " _Call me when you're ready._ "

He hangs up.

Barry doesn't sleep at all that night.


	8. Trustee

Aside from metahuman encounters, Barry's health has been outstanding for the past two years.

When he skids to a halt in the Arrow cave, his cowl is off and his face is ashen, his legs trembling before he drops into a chair. Oliver knows without touching him that something is deeply wrong, but he still approaches with open-minded curiosity. Barry's trembling morphs into full-blown shivers, lightning trying to warm him up. When Oliver touches his hand, he's stunned at how _cold_ it is.

And getting colder.

The fever he anticipates isn't there. Oliver knows Barry needs it, persuading him to put an arm around Oliver's shoulders and dragging him to his feet. His legs are leaden, uncooperative, but he still hobbles obediently at Oliver's side, breath coming in quick, shallow gasps. The elevator doors close behind them and Oliver lets him go long enough to shrug out of his own jacket, wrapping it over the top half of Barry's suit.

It's cool, mid-forties, but Oliver didn't survive Lian Yu to be deterred by a wind chill. He gets Barry in the back of his car and slides into the driver's seat, turning it on and letting the air heat up before cranking it up to its highest setting. Curled on his side, Barry doesn't move, his cool, sickly pallor unchanging.

Oliver drives, the fifteen-minute commute sufficient to bring Barry's color down to an alarming shade of blue, his shivers under the surface and failing. Once Oliver parks, it's a short walk to his apartment, but he feels Barry's legs getting stiffer, refusing to respond, and wonders how he managed to run six hundred miles to Star before collapsing.

 _Sheer force of will_ , he concludes, dragging Barry out of the backseat and flinching at how cold he is. The contact isn't enough to hurt, but he's relieved to drop Barry on his bed, leaving the jacket on him. Oliver jacks up the thermostat to compensate for the slightly cooler edge to the room. Returning to Barry's side, he tugs his own jacket from Barry's shoulders and unzips the suit, whistling low as charcoaled flesh emerges underneath it.

 _What did you do?_ he wonders, inducing a single shudder when he feels the edge of the wounds scattered across his ribcage. They're cold, _icy_ , and _frostbite_ clicks. It's the perfect weapon for a speedster: Barry's body can't fight it because it's not just cooling him off but slowing him _down_.

Oliver abandons him long enough to get some hot water in the bathtub before hauling him to the edge of the mattress and forcing the pants of his suit off. "C'mon," he grunts, refusing to flinch when icy fingers close numbly around his shoulder for balance. Little hitching breaths sneak past Barry's chattering teeth as Oliver half-guides, half-carries him into the bathroom.

He doesn't want the shock to kill Barry so Oliver only persuades him to put his feet in the water, keeping the water level low. After thirty seconds, Barry's shivering intensifies and some of the blueness in his complexion shifts back to reds. Turning the faucet back on, Oliver lets it rise halfway up his calves before switching it off, sitting back on his haunches.

Barry doesn't slink into the water as he expects, sitting there, teeth clenched as his chest expands and compresses with arctic slowness. A stat's class Oliver slept through tugs on his memory, recalling an old expression: statisticians sleep with their heads in a freezer and feet in an oven to average out a normal body temperature.

With a fortifying breath, Barry pushes off and eases into the water. He gasps in pain when the black swath across his chest meets the heat, tensing before sinking to his shoulders. Right arm propped against the side of the tub – and still morbidly cold – he closes his eyes, the steam from the water highlighting the bluish undertone to his face, one-foot-in-the-grave.

Oliver drops a hand in the water before placing it on Barry's right arm, warmth bleeding through his fingers. Barry tenses but doesn't remove his arm, letting Oliver repeat the process, pushing warmth into his skin. He strokes Barry's frozen wrist until it warms, Speed-soft and strong. The flush on Barry's face is reassuring, pale at first but increasingly vivid, at last peaking at a shade like his suit.

Oliver squeezes his wrist and the look he gets is alert, red fire glowing behind those eyes. "I'll be back," he says, standing.

They're virtually the same height and similarly built, making it easy to find clothes Oliver is confident will fit him. He drops them and a towel on the floor, granting Barry the privacy to put them on. In the kitchen, he roots through empty cabinets, mentally noting that just because he's The Vigilante doesn't mean he can avoid grocery shopping, at last grabbing what he has and returning to the bedroom.

Seeing Barry in his clothes – and they fit, albeit slightly more loosely than they do on Oliver – warms something in his chest. Barry raises a tired eyebrow at his findings and plucks the box of cornflakes from his hand. "Breakfast of champions," Oliver says.

Barry doesn't respond, popping open the lid and holding the box up so he can shake its contents into his mouth. He's finally starting to warm up sufficiently that Oliver can feel it, surprised at how tense _he_ was until the heat presses against him. Waiting until he pauses, Oliver asks, "What happened?"

"Got on the wrong side of a frost meta," Barry rasps, shaking out the final bits of cereal from the box.

"So you ran to Star City," Oliver prompts.

Barry stills before folding the empty box into a recyclable square. "Yes." There's something guarded about his voice, something that hasn't given way with time, no matter how hard Oliver pushes him.

Sensing he might get farther, he asks, "Do Cisco and Caitlin know you're here?"

It's like the fire goes out, his eyes dark and shoulders hunched. "Ollie, I don't want to talk about it."

"We need to talk about it," Oliver pushes. "It's bothering you." _That bothers me._

Barry sighs, tossing the box in the appropriate bin before retrieving the box of granola bars. He mulls his response over crunched bites. At last, he says, "Flashpoint."

It's explanatory – Felicity broke it down to manageable pieces for him, how Barry time traveled – but he still asks, "What about it?"

Barry crunches down on another bar, the solid sound a contrast to his tense shoulders. "I broke things."

"What kind of things?"

Barry stuffs the empty box in the bin next to its predecessor, elaborating shortly, "Everything."

Oliver huffs, watching him wander deeper into the kitchen to root through the cabinets with bear-like obstinacy. It doesn't matter how many times Barry says _Flashpoint_ , he realizes, because looking at the sight in front of him is exactly how his conceptualization of reality is meant to be.

Even ruffled and snarly with hunger and pain, he's still the Barry who came to him first when he needed someone.

He did so when Cisco and Caitlin weren't available, Oliver qualifies, which is fair: he'd go to Dig or Felicity before his six-hundred-mile-away-speedster. _I wish you weren't so far_.

At the same time, he's grateful for the distance, for being heeded when he says, _I want to be alone_. Laurel's death hit him hard. Barry hadn't been there for Tommy's funeral and it was almost fitting that he wasn't there for Laurel's. Grief can be shared, but grieving is penultimately _alone_.

Barry gets that – maybe more than any other human being _can_ , given his relationship with that vast ephemeral other that is Speed Force. He honors Oliver's request for space, even if a few hours became a few days became a few months.

But he hadn't realized just how wanting the space was without Barry in it, how sore the longing was. He'd forgotten how intense Barry's occupation was. Danger was part of his life, too. Ignoring him did not mean Barry disappeared; it meant Barry ventured on.

Barry emerges triumphantly from a lower cabinet with a box of Poptarts and the dichotomy of their lives – lethal spurts interrupted by mundane treasures – hits him.

Felicity calls Barry a lovable dummy and Oliver sees how easy it is to fall in love with The Flash's strength coupled with Barry's humanity.

"You're staring," Barry points out through a mouthful of Poptart.

"You're talking with your mouth full," Oliver replies.

Barry salutes him with the box in a silent _touché_. Munching along, he finishes and discards the box before sobering enough to say, "Thank you."

"For saving your life or letting you raid my kitchen?"

Barry draws closer and Oliver thinks about touching his wrist, just to feel the warmth and Speed-softness there, very aware of the fact that he's worn the shirt on Barry's back dozens of times. Barry answers, "Both."

Oliver satisfies himself by pressing a gentle hand against Barry's hip, just beside the frostbitten skin. Barry doesn't flinch, looking at him with those trusting golden eyes, and it hurts to be trusted so much.

"Any time," he replies.


	9. Trust Me

With doomsday imminence, the meteor flashes across Central City.

It doesn't matter that it's impossible to stop: Barry takes off after it. He knows he can't catch it – _you don't have super strength_ – but he can't stand by, either. Someone needs to act. Who more suited to avert the improbable than the impossible?

If nothing else, he hopes to provide damage control. If there is such a thing for a multi-ton object striking the Earth with apocalyptic, nuclear force.

He knows Oliver wouldn't approve his method – _you ran after a bomb_ – but he has no choice. _I have to try._ Someday, he knows, that insistence will carry him to his grave. It did in a universe where Mark Mardon rose to power and cast a tidal wave at Central City; it repeated the feat with Vandal Savage's attack.

But the universe spares him this time: it's not a meteorite. It's a _spaceship._

In an explosion of dust, it crashes. Its impact is so disproportionally minor to its size that Barry can't help but immediately qualify it as a successful landing. A rock of its size should have wiped the Age of Mammals off the map.

 _It's not a rock_.

He approaches, curiosity shouldering past caution. Clicking the comm, he lets Cisco and Caitlin know that it's not the world-ending catalyst they feared. Maybe it's the steep drop in adrenaline – or the renewed surge when he detects movement within – that lowers his guard. Either way, he gets close enough to enter the technological dead zone, cutting off his team and life support.

Before his good sense returns, the spaceship door blows off its hinges, throwing him off his feet. From within, tall, gray, spindly-limbed aliens emerge. With _Jurassic_ intent, a leader saunters forward (later he'll learn how Cisco and Caitlin can only watch as his heartrate climbs through the roof) and crouches over him, snarling in his face. Lethality drips from that gaping sharp-toothed maw, but its jaws don't close around him. Instead, it joins the ship's occupants in a single swarm, surging over him like a herd of primordial wildebeest. He rolls to avoid the plunging limbs, each striking with enough force to punch a hole through him.

Once he's sure he can stand, he Flashes to his feet, looking around for his quarries.

Nowhere in sight, he realizes, exhaling deeply.

He can't help it, summarizing the experience in four words: "Oh, come on. _Aliens?_ "

. o .

All he can dream about are those poisonous jaws closing around his neck, aware of ear-splitting satisfaction as the others close in, tearing at him, trying to dismantle him even though the suit is trying so hard to resist and then one yanks his arm hard and—

He jerks awake, falling out of bed and Flashing to his feet, flipping the light switch to disperse the snarling gray shadows from his midst.

 _Aliens_ , he thinks weakly, knees a little shaky as he sits back on the edge of the bed, head in his hands.

. o .

When morning comes and Lyla asks him at the site of the crash what he saw, all he can come up with is, "Enough to give Ridley Scott nightmares."

"Meet me at STAR Labs," she instructs. "I'll tell you everything I know."

. o .

"Since we learned of them, we've been calling them the Dominators," Lyla supplies, handing out photocopies of a single grainy image.

Barry's fingers close around the paper.

"That is not the name of a species that comes in peace," Wally observes.

And then Barry's world slows to a halt, silence closing in. In the image, the tall shadowy figures sway menacingly with imagined movement, shuffling through the forest as the leader turns towards him, closing in. The hairs on Barry's arms rise, unease settling deep in his chest.

Even holding hard evidence, the news still doesn't want to process. The monsters on the image aren't figments; they're real, live aliens on his Earth. They're not locked up in fantastical mental compartments labeled cautiously _what if_ and wistfully _if only_. They're real enough to almost kill him.

Comprehension is a schematic struggle. It shouldn't be; after all, he knows an alien: Kara Zor-El, aka _Supergirl_. But there's a fundamental difference between the _Dominators_ and his part-time collaborator.

For starters, Kara doesn't look like an alien – at least, not unless she flies or uses her laser eyes. She fits his expectation of a human being. No amount of extraordinary proof can erase the biological reassurance he feels because of it. He suspects it's a mutual conceptual difficulty: to her, _he_ probably doesn't look like an alien, either, resembling a Kryptonian more than a stranger.

It's splitting hairs to call themselves aliens; anatomically, they're almost the same species. He suspects convergent evolution played a role, the same traits evolving across disconnected populations due to similar environmental pressures. He's human, and she's Kryptonian, but aside from a few different quirks – disregarding Barry's own exceptionality among his species and Kara's on an Earth with a far more powerful sun than Krypton's – they're basically family.

These guys? Are not family.

They're more like _Independence Day_ monsters and unlike Kara, they don't come alone and they don't come in peace, either.

In fairness to the Dominators, maybe Barry _should_ have been more afraid of his First Contact with an Alien, but Kara is – _sunshine_. Disliking her is impossible. Reeling from the giant, screeching creatures is reflexive, a vital response to ensure self-preservation. Reconciling the two realities in his mind is a whirlwind, no easier to digest than _Dig has a son_.

It's an unshakable whisper in the back of his mind: _You caused that._ _You did this._

Before Barry can form a counterargument, HR laughs, "No, no, it's very aggressive." The world snaps back to real-time with dizzying suddenness, leaving him longing for the silence.

"So how long have we known about these Dominators?" Iris asks.

It's easier to stand back, to process the news rather than contribute to the story, a story he cannot tell because _I caused this, but I don't know how._ He crosses his arms and stares at the footage of soldiers firing upon a swarm of Dominators. The footage cuts out and Lyla says, "Then for some inexplicable reason, they left."

 _And now they're back._

The conversation takes on a grim tone as Lyla lays out the sequence of probable events, the unspoken _and then they destroy us_ left out of the finale. "Action is being taken," she assures.

Barry feels an electric horror at the thought of people – ordinary people, covered in useless armor – going up against the Dominators. _They'll die._

He can't stay silent. "These aliens are like _World War Z_ zombies. If they decide to attack, no military can stop them."

"And neither could you," Lyla says earnestly, stepping forward. She has Dig's sincerity, his intense, immediate sense of clarity coming through her voice. _Stand down, Barry_. "Not by yourself, anyway," she qualifies, and it tips a domino.

 _Oliver._

"Just let us handle this," she continues, unaware that his mind is halfway to Star City. "For now."

He nods compliantly, saying nothing when she says she'll be in touch. Once she leaves – once Speed Force is just as convinced that her presence is out of range – Barry turns to his team.

Wally's a quick study. "So, we're not just going to let this go, are we?"

"No," Barry replies.

"Barry," Iris warns, "you heard what she said. You can't do this alone."

The conviction is deep. "I don't plan to."

. o .

Upon reflection, Barry thinks he probably should have called first.

Dig, Ollie, and he drop out of Speed Force and Dig staggers away from him. The intense nausea radiating from him is palpable and Barry knows what's coming. "I'm sorry, man, I—" Barry offers, cut off by Dig's sharp _it's okay_.

It's a parental affection, like Barry's just a recalcitrant six-year-old who accidentally smacked him below the belt and not a twenty-seven-year-old speedster who intentionally abducted him. Oliver grimaces with the same unspoken restraint, _don't yell_ written in every line of his feature as he exhales loudly.

Dig vomits and Barry winces, gesturing apologetically towards him as the door opens and Felicity steps into the room. _Oh, thank God._ "Hey," he offers, palm up, tail tucked between his legs.

"Hi, Barry," Felicity replies, the same warmth in her voice.

Barry doesn't know what he did to deserve the lack of yelling, but he appreciates it, relaxing despite Dig's ongoing suffering. Turning to Oliver, he can't resist his curiosity, whispering, "So, who was that guy—"

And promptly plunges through the thin ice of Oliver's patience. " _That_ was Vigilante, and we nearly had him."

Restraint isn't his forte, but to be fair, he doesn't openly guffaw. "You nearly had him, Ollie?" He knows he's going to lose the Ollie privilege, but _for real?_ "It looked like he was about to go all _Scarface_ on you guys."

Oliver's politeness is somehow even more intense than his yelling. "Barry, is there something I can do for you—"

"Yes—"

"Another evil speedster to help you with?" Oliver says, plowing right over him as Dig vomits.

"Uh—maybe, actually," Barry replies because _if you want to put an arrow through Savitar, please be my guest._ "But that's not why I'm here."

Oliver gives the cues, Barry knows, because Felicity's voice carries a hint of steel when she asks, "What was so urgent that you had to rush to Star City?"

Oliver's genuine confusion – and fine, Barry can admit it to himself, quietly, where no one can hear him: _pouty face_ – is distracting and extremely unhelpful, but he still manages to find the right words. Or, rather, word. Singular. Because like _Flashpoint_ , it speaks for itself: "Aliens."

Oliver matches his tone exactly, his flat whisper conveying the same amount of disbelief Barry felt at the news. " _Aliens._ "

"I swear to God, Barry," Dig rasps, wiping his mouth as Barry turns to him, "my life was somewhat normal before I met you."

Barry remembers a time when the most thrilling thing that had ever happened to him was Dr. Wells making eye contact with him during a public speech. To think of all that has transpired since is dizzying. It's also distracting, so he shoves those feelings back into the closet and locks the door.

Hands going to the back of his head, he tries to convey urgency and control. _Like Oliver._ "I – look, okay, they're real. And they're already here. And from what Lyla told us it does not appear to be in peace."

"Oh, no," Felicity says in a low voice.

Dig's raspy, "Lyla knows about this?" makes Barry's stomach hurt.

 _Tell him,_ an insidious little voice whispers. _Tell him about his daughter._

He can't. Hating himself a little, he says, "Lyla – yeah, she came to—" Dig walks and it slips out: "Where are you—?"

Oliver's focus is on one person and Barry follows it, staring at Thea because – Thea? Turns out Felicity called her and Barry doesn't need to turn to feel the protective energy radiating from Oliver. And the disapproval.

"I thought you retired," he says.

"Yeah, but it's – it's _aliens_ ," she explains, and Barry's reminded of Cisco's enthusiasm for the topic. Maybe they could trade places, Thea hang out with Cisco and Caitlin who want nothing to do with him. He could trail after Oliver and Dig and Felicity, occasionally fitting in but mostly standing out. Too fast to keep up but too slow to catch on.

"Aw," Felicity says, and there's a dangerous sweetness in her tone. "That is so cute, you guys are just gonna get together and go fight some aliens— _have you lost your minds?_ "

 _There it is._

He opens his mouth to speak but Felicity, like Oliver, has mastered the _immovable object_ voice. "They're aliens, and there's only _four_ of you," she reminds, and her voice barely needs to rise to a shout to get the message across.

Even Oliver keeps his silence, but – _this is too important_ – Barry presses on. "Not if we get Stein and, you know, all the others to—"

Oliver nods and Barry feels the tension in his shoulders ease. It's _okay_ without a word. He fills in, "They're calling themselves the Legends."

"Egotistical, but catchy," Thea notes.

Barry turns to him and Oliver's arms are folded but Barry can feel the solidarity. "Do you know where they are?" he asks.

"I know where they were," Oliver replies.

Barry nods, eager to follow through, but he takes a step forward and Oliver catches the side of his suit. It's not a gentle grip. "Would you two give us a moment?" he asks Felicity and Thea. His voice is velvet, promising politeness, and Thea's nonplussed _sure_ is accompanied by Felicity's warning _be nice_ glare.

 _Promise_ , Oliver's posture says, his grip promising otherwise.

Once they have the floor – and Oliver makes him wait in painful silence for them to have it, completely sure that they're out of earshot – Oliver lets him go. "Talk," he growls.

His lowered voice does not have the intended intimidation effect, an electric current running right to Barry's core. When Barry doesn't speak, Oliver takes it for what it is – refusal to comply – and turns to face him. There's a dark frustration behind his eyes, a protectiveness at odds with his tense jaw, but his hand is all business as he plants it against Barry's chest and backs him against the brick wall. He holds Barry there, his glare as arresting as the physical pressure.

"Ollie—"

Oliver's hand lets him go but he doesn't move, letting himself be caged in. Letting himself believe for a moment that maybe, no matter what happens, they'll be okay.

He says, "I won't let anything happen to them." _Protect the team._

Oliver nods, backing off, and Barry wants to grab his suit and pull him back in. _Stay_.

But on cue, Thea and Felicity reenter. Straightening his chest, Oliver looks at them all and says, "Let's go."


	10. Experto Crede

**Experto crede: "Trust the expert."**

For a man as self-assured as Barry, he's frazzled in front of a crowd.

Oliver attributes it to Barry's first time overseeing a group larger than four people. The high bar doesn't help: almost everyone has an edge on him. Sara is two years older and a former member of the League of Assassins; Dig is twelve years older with military service. Oliver himself has four years on Barry and almost ten years of field experience. Being the de facto leader of Team Arrow, he's also spent more time in the captain's chair.

Felicity is Barry's age but made it clear that she did not want greatness thrust upon her. Caitlin stays low and nondescript, preferring not to play either. It's easy to rule out Firestorm – they're too split-minded. Mick's hotheadedness and Ray's people-pleasing tendency disqualify them. Cisco – he's smart, and powerful, but locked in his own head. Iris is as intellectually fit as Sara, and even newbie Kara would have an edge on Barry, being a welcomed guest and therefore less likely to be intimidated by the group.

But, as Oliver rightfully points out, Barry brought them together.

 _He should do it._

Barry's expression melts. _You sure?_ he asks with the tiniest hitch of his eyebrows.

Oliver nods once firmly, his own brow furrowed. _Of course._

Anxiety wins out and Barry babbles for a solid thirty seconds, rubbing the back of his neck and fidgeting with his hands as he tries to put together a coherent sentence. _Let him work through it_ concedes to _But don't let the team dissolve_ as he says sotto voce, " _Doing a test run._ "

Barry latches on with gusto, all but shouting, "Let's do a test run! Yeah, let's do a test run…"

He can almost hear them placing bets; Sara's and Mick's expressions are particularly loud.

 _I give him twenty minutes before he resigns._

 _Ten, tops._

"Against Supergirl," Oliver says, trying to put as much steel into his tone. _You're a smart guy, Barry._ _Think this through._

"Against Supergirl!" Barry parrots, his nervous energy failing to rattle the team. The wall of experience does not crumple under first time jitters. They arch eyebrows and fold their arms and Sara even voices what they're all thinking – _are we just supposed to pretend like we don't hear him?_ – but they go with it.

Because, the unspoken decision rules, Oliver goes with it.

Barry's excited, a Wells look-alike – Oliver doesn't even try to keep his story straight at this point, trusting Team Flash's judgment – cheers with him, the teams splitting off to "suit up!" Before he can reassure Dig, Thea, and Felicity that his faith in Barry isn't misplaced, Barry calls him and Kara aside.

He keeps his posture stiff, his voice flat when Barry's sunshine twin tries to earn a winning smile from him. "Oliver was the first person to train me," Barry says, grinning.

"Really?" Kara asks, beaming. Turning to him, she says, "Well, you did a really good job."

"It's because I didn't hold back," Oliver deadpans. "I shot him. And you can't hold back either."

"He did … shoot me," Barry chimes in with a small voice.

"Ouch," Kara says. "Um, okay. Are you sure about that?" She laughs, adding, "I just met these people—"

"These people need to understand this isn't gonna be easy," he cuts in, cool and confident. "Don't hold back. Especially against me."

"Yes, sir," Kara replies, looking a little bewildered but none the worse for wear. Oliver leaves them to it, Kara's bewilderment.

 _He's … like that with everyone._ _He'll warm up to you,_ Barry assures.

He isn't so persuadable that the defense of his honor can draw a smile from him, but it does loosen a tightness in his chest he hadn't known was there.

. o .

An old Barry is an oxymoron.

Hands on his hips, Oliver looks down at the seated Barry and superimposes age. He dusts gray throughout his hair, adding muscle to the broad back. The suit takes a beating in his mind, a charcoal shadow hanging over it, soles of his boots worn, lightning bolt emblem faded. His face, creased in a thoughtful frown, develops sharp cuts with age, his jawline more pronounced, his brow more wrinkled. The lightning in his eyes burns just as bright as before, but Oliver feels the barrier between it and the world weaken. Or, rather, the merge between Barry and Speed Force intensify, like the man speaking is less than half human.

It's a lot to process. The … _future war_ is a lot to process, too.

And then Barry opens up about Flashpoint.

"What did you do?" Stein asks.

"I went back in time," Barry replies, and what Oliver could not do Barry's future-self achieves, prompting him to talk about it, "and I saved my mom."

Oliver closes his eyes, a mixture of exasperation and tragedy infused in it. _Bar._

"I created a timeline where she was alive," Barry continues, oblivious. "It's called Flashpoint." His voice is hollow, like the fight has sunk from his shoulders. The self-flagellation is not new, Oliver knows. _How long has it been since Barry first said 'Flashpoint'?_ "I lived in it for a few months until I realized that I made a big mistake and I tried to reset the timeline, put things back how they were supposed to be, but—"

"But it didn't work," Jax finishes.

"No."

Oliver exhales. "Wow," he says. "Barry, that's—" _heavy._

Stein cuts in, all business, but for once, Oliver doesn't share the sentiment. He remembers his first big mistake – the way blood felt on his hands, tacky and cold, the sight of a man's skull bashed in with a large stone branded in his memory – and he knows what it took to draw him back from the edge. This isn't Barry's first mistake, but it is the most crushing, and he's been living alone with the burden for the better part of two months.

It's no surprise his shoulders look hunched; the weight must be crushing. "Cisco's brother is dead," he explains. "Caitlin has powers. Diggle has a son now instead of a daughter."

He can't ignore that. "What? John had a daughter?"

"I didn't just screw up my life, man," Barry says, all aching apology. "I screwed up everybody's lives, and apparently, everybody's lives in the future, too." Barry's voice drops a little, a shameful admission: "It felt like, when these aliens got here that finally something had happened I didn't cause, and maybe I could make up for everything I'd done to everybody, but I –"

"I think we should be on the up and up with everybody," Jax says, firm, de facto Team Leader. "We got to tell 'em."

 _Absolutely not._ "We're going up against a bunch of aliens," Oliver interjects, "and you want to tell people that their lives might have been affected by time travel? One sci-fi problem at a time." It'll cripple the team otherwise, wrapped up in what-ifs. And, a not insignificant portion of his mind chimes in, it'll draw a line in the sand: Barry against the world that could not fight him.

 _We need unity._ That was why Barry called them in the first place. To fight _together_.

"You made a mistake, Barry," he says, and Barry looks at him with glassy eyes. Hopeful, dejected. "It's part of the job. But we can't deal with it today." Barry's gaze slides to the floor, acknowledgment and a hint of mutiny in the gesture.

 _I can't let it go_ , it says.

 _You did for two months._ Oliver leads the way out. _Just a little longer._

. o .

Sometimes Oliver envies Barry's Speed-healing.

"Are you sure you want me to keep going?" Kara asks, peppy and unharmed.

"Yeah. Yes." His bruised ribs throb, but he manages to keep his voice steady as he stands. "Just give us five minutes. Please."

To Kara's credit, she isn't holding back.

And Cisco isn't, either, Oliver notices, too late to intervene as Cisco says sharply, "And you still didn't tell them."

"Tell us what?" Sara asks.

 _This is going down now._

It's the worst timing – Barry's forte – but the argument is inevitable now that Sara calls it to light. After all, she's a Team Leader. Kara is a team unto herself; Sara is the Legends' captain; Oliver speaks for Team Arrow; and tentatively, Barry is still Team Flash's leader. The division demands reconciliation.

And so Barry tells them.

John's surprise hurts, and Oliver knows it isn't Barry's place to tell him. He steps in. "Hey," Oliver says quietly, "apparently, you had a daughter."

Something fractures, any illusion of team unity dissolving. Felicity's anxious announcement stirs nothing more than resignation. When Barry says he'll sit out the rescue attempt, Oliver almost can't believe what he's hearing.

 _Barry, you screwed up, but we need the whole team to do this._ _You are part of that team._

Apparently, the rest of the team doesn't feel that way. They're halfway out the door, Kara and John the sole hold-outs, when Oliver grinds out, "Guys, this is cr— _hey!_ This is crazy." At last they turn to look at him. He knows his voice carries weight with them, but their expressions say, _We've chosen our side._ _Choose yours_. "Everyone is going, including Barry," he snarls.

And then he chooses a side.

"I – " Suddenly it's hard to choose between them, _team versus Barry_ , but the truth remains: "I'm not going without him."

"Then you'll be here, Oliver," John says simply.

 _It's Barry or my team,_ he realizes belatedly.

 _Barry is my team._

The silence is punishing, prompting Kara to step in. "Okay, uh –" Hands up in a placating gesture, she explains, "You know what? Oliver, it's okay." He looks at her, surprised and speechless. "I will go with them," Kara says, gesturing towards the retreating team legends. "We'll get the President." Pointing at Barry, she adds, "You stay here with Barry."

Both sides walk in opposite directions. "Hey," Oliver calls after Barry, and then louder, more forcefully, " _Hey._ "

"I need to show you something," Barry says, agitated, not turning to look at him. Felicity doesn't say a word when Barry storms past her, the somber Team Flash similarly stoic.

Barry walks to the very end of the air hangar, Oliver trailing. When Barry pauses, his shoulders tense, like he half-expects to turn and find an empty room, but Oliver is right there, asking quietly, "What the hell, Barry?"

"I need to – show you something," he repeats, and there's both an apology and a question in his voice as he edges closer.

It doesn't escape Oliver's notice that no one so much as voices a protest at their two _team leaders_ abandoning the site in the middle of a critical rescue mission. The others are gone, and the stand-by crew doesn't react to their absence. If anything, Oliver suspects grimly, they're relieved.

Barry carries all the tension in the room. Barry's Speed makes it infectious, enough to set his teeth on edge. But he doesn't turn tail and join the rest of the crew in the field.

He says, gruff but permissive, "Okay."

"Okay?" Barry repeats, the hand on his shoulder explanatory.

Oliver nods once stiffly in response, closing his eyes.

He expects the same horrible kaleidoscopic vertigo to seize him, but without sight, it's a different experience. There are no contradictory signals: Speed Force is a shield against the wind, lending a sense of weightlessness to the experience. The trip is too short to take process; he's only aware of movement in the hypothetical sense.

When they ski to a halt – and Oliver realizes that it is a gentle grade and not the steep descent that it appears, his optical cues failing to scream, _Stop, stop, stop_ before they crash into something – he opens his eyes. It's surreal: six seconds ago, he was standing in an air hangar; now he's looking around one of the long, winding tunnels associated with STAR labs.

Barry releases the grip on his nape immediately, keeping a palm on his shoulder to steady him. It's comforting, given that it takes a moment to adjust to gravity's sudden return. Once Barry's convinced he won't keel over, the hand vanishes and Barry walks up to the wall in front of them. Removing one of his gloves, Barry presses his palm flat against a glowing panel, unlocking – literally, unlocking interlaced panels – a secret door.

"Barry, I swear to God—" Oliver says gruffly, curiosity winning out as Barry walks into the pitch-black darkness within. Following him, Oliver stares as the space brightens, yielding a futuristic room, an old asylum-like air hanging around its ubiquitous wall pattern. It's small, shoebox, but Oliver knows it isn't his headquarters, just a safe house.

" _Good evening, Barry Allen,_ " a robotic voice greets.

"Gideon," Barry replies. His voice sounds scorched, defeated. "Show me the article from April 25, 2024," he requests.

" _Certainly._ "

A moment later, a projected image appears in front of the wall.

Suddenly a forty-year-old Barry leaving a time capsule message for them doesn't seem as absurd.

"I didn't think about it, Oliver," Barry whispers, back to him, arms folded. "I didn't think about the future. I was so focused on the past I didn't think about it until now. I changed so much."

"What is this?" Oliver asks. He needs to hear it.

"This is … an article from the future," Barry replies. "It's a story about me vanishing."

It sends a cold thrill down Oliver's spine, his ears ringing with the proclamation: _Oliver Queen is alive._ After five years, the prodigal son returned. It made a good story.

The words _Vanishes in crisis_ bring no comfort.

"Used to be written by Iris West-Allen," Barry admits.

 _Iris_ , Oliver reflects. _Cisco, Caitlin_.

He isn't proud of the jealousy he feels. He knows that there will be others keeping Barry tied to Central City, more proof that Oliver's singular presence does not merit the ongoing commutes between their two cities. The thin, overstretched thread connecting Barry and he will fray over time. He can't blame that on Barry's friends or his lifestyle and he wouldn't take either from him, but he can't help the strange hollowness in his chest at the eventuality of Barry settling down far, far away.

"But now, I don't know," Barry says, mercifully unaware of the tightness in Oliver's chest at the thought. "Something's – something's changed with Iris. Something's changed with our future."

Oliver's own words come back to him: _Guys like us don't get the girl._

His voice sounds so _defeated_ when he whispers, "God, what did I do?"

Oliver can't stay silent. "Barry," he asserts, "this is a weird-looking newspaper article. It doesn't mean anything. You need to _stop_ beating yourself up over this."

It presses on a nerve. "I'm sorry, but how can you say that? I'm responsible for all of this."

 _Be angry at me,_ his posture says, _I can't earn forgiveness until you've worked through it._

But Oliver isn't angry. Because when he looks at Barry he doesn't see selfishness. He sees a man in pain, crushed between two situations – one without his parents, one without his friends – and no way out.

And Oliver may not know much about time travel, but he _does_ know that: "Maybe. Maybe not." When Barry shakes his head, ready to argue – _please, please just be mad, please get this over with_ – Oliver insists, "Barry, you made a choice. You wanted to see your parents alive again. Do you honestly know anyone that, if they were in your shoes, wouldn't do the exact same thing? _I_ would do the exact same thing," he says empathically, hand on his own chest.

Barry stares at him, the first hint of doubt in those almost-golden eyes. Averting his gaze, Barry shakes his head, but his posture is open, listening. Oliver dares to continue. "Barry, after the _Gambit_ went down, it was me, my father, and a crewmember on a life raft. Lost at sea. Enough food and water for one person, maybe." He looks Barry dead in the eye, forcing him to acknowledge that this isn't a placating story told to ease a friend's suffering.

 _This is real._ _These are_ my _choices._

If there's one person his voice still carries weight with, he realizes, it's Barry. Listening intently.

It hurts to relive it. "My father took a gun, shot the crewmember, told me to survive, and then turned the gun on himself. He shot himself in the head. He _sacrificed_ himself so that I could live. Nothing I could do. No choice." He has Barry's attention. "Slade Wilson drove a sword right through my mother's heart," he growls, "in front of my sister and I." His voice drops to a rasp: "I was there. I was helpless on the ground. I was _powerless_ to stop it. No choice." Gaining momentum, he dares, "Do you not think that I wouldn't give _anything_ to go back and make things different?"

 _Do you not think I'm human?_ he asks, turning the accusation on Barry.

But Barry, being Barry, doesn't see that right away. "You never told me that," he says, awe and pain in his voice.

"Barry, the world isn't different because you changed the timeline," Oliver insists. "Change happens. Tragedy happens. People make _choices,_ and those choices affect everyone else." Driving the point home, he asserts softly, "You're not a god, Barry."

He thinks he might be getting through to Barry, but then the game changes.

The building lurches underneath their feet.

Cisco says, "Hey guys, wherever you are right now, we need you."

Barry swipes the panel, changing the screen view to an outdoor camera facing STAR Labs.

"Oh, things just got so much worse," he summarizes.


	11. Fide Nemini

**"Trust no one."**

 **Note: Oliver's POV is up next and will explain what comes across as inexplicable behavior to Barry. Hint: Oliver had visions while he was in the Dominators' captivity that affected him rather profoundly.**

If there's anyone Barry would want at his side in a war, it's Oliver.

As partners, they hold their own well, even if the human half of the team almost puts Barry down. Before they can, Wally flies by, taking them out. With Cisco and Felicity closing in on the case, Barry thinks they might win.

Then Kara takes down Wally.

With Wally out of commission and Cisco and Felicity's hacking skills coming up short against alien technology, Barry thinks, _Guess we'll have to take down the satellite the old-fashioned way._

Splitting up is risky, but Barry is the only person who stands a chance against Supergirl. He's uneasy leaving Oliver alone with Dig, Thea, and Sara, but Ollie was right:

 _No choice._

It's a crazy plan – reinforced when Kara _almost_ splits him in half with a laser blast – but Barry doesn't back down.

 _C'mon, c'mon_ , he coaxes, tearing through the building, struck by the fact that he is both bull and matador in this equation. _C'mon._

All he needs to do is get her to break it. _Easier said than done._

He's tiring faster than he cares to admit, but he presses on, very aware that he will die if he slips up. Kara pins him down – _right where I need you_ – and Barry runs a half-second before contact.

It's explosive and for a moment Barry has a feeling that he overestimated Kara's invincibility, but then he sees her staggering and his panting breaths melt into a smile. _We did it._

"What happened?" Kara asks anxiously, looking back at the device.

"You didn't kill me, so my day's looking up," Barry says, irresistibly thrilled, walking towards her. _We got them back._

"I'm so sorry," Kara replies.

Barry assures her, "Hey, you're not the first superhero to be mind-controlled." Then he pulls her into a tight hug, his own relief relaxing some of the tension in her shoulders.

"Oh, thank God," is all she says, holding onto the backs of his shoulders, squeezing him hard enough to elicit a soft grunt. "Sorry! Sorry, I forget – you're not _actually_ a Kryptonian despite the whole – speed thing."

"It's fine," Barry wheezes, doubling over when she lets go, "ribs just needed a tune-up anyway."

Kara sighs, relief and fondness in her voice as she asks, "Is everyone okay?"

"Everyone's great," Barry promises, speaking to the ground. With a slight grimace, he straightens, a smile lighting up his face as soon as he sees her. "Glad to have you back. The aliens – they had you, Dig, Sara, Ray – the whole team mind-controlled."

"How did you—?"

Barry nods at the remnants of the device at the center of the room. "Knocked their power out," he says simply. "We should get back to STAR Labs, see how everyone else is doing."

"Of course," Kara says, shaking her head like it should've occurred to her already. "Are you sure you're okay?" she adds, reaching out to steady him when he stumbles a little.

"I could use a burger – a lot of burgers – but I wanna check in first," he says, brushing aside the hidden _did I hurt you?_ question.

"I'll make sure there aren't any more of those … mind-controlling things," Kara says, gesturing over her shoulder.

"That's a good idea." Before she can leave, Barry gives her a quick and very gentle hug. "We're still friends," he assures her.

"You are one of a kind," she says, amusement in her voice as she steps back and takes off.

Back at STAR Labs, Oliver has the team assembled, their expressions sober but _theirs_. No more mind-control.

Ray speaks up first, his voice solemn and sincere: "Barry – about before? Message or no message, we're with you."

It speaks to his core, fight adrenaline tapering into post-fight euphoria. "Thank you," he says.

"So, where's Supergirl?" Thea asks.

"Scanning the city to make sure there aren't any more of the orbs that whammied all of you."

Dig steps forward. Barry doesn't know what to say to him, but he's glad to see Dig is still with them. "Okay, so now what?"

Oliver – always Oliver, _Team Leader_ Oliver – has the answer. "We call Lyla," he says, "tell her these Dominators aren't here peacefully."

It's the drop in adrenaline, Barry will tell himself, that put down his guard. It's the certainty in Oliver's voice. It's the way the team was back together and ready to move forward as such.

One way or another, the beams of light snatch Sara, Dig, and Thea before he's had a chance to open his mouth.

At last, instinct kicks in. " _Everybody inside!_ _Go!_ " he shouts. Felicity, Mick, and Firestorm sprint for cover. Barry looks away long enough to hear the buzz of another beam snatch up Ray.

He turns and feels the world slow down as a bolt of bronze lightning strikes Oliver.

Running as _fast_ as he _can,_ he surges forward, Speed-time slowing the world to an agonizing crawl. Oliver can't move, his life in Barry's hands, and Barry thinks, _Please please please not Ollie not Ollie_ please.

Then Oliver vanishes and Barry's arms close around nothing.

He can't hear anything over the ringing in his ears, staring skyward. Half-expecting a beam to come down and take him, too, he waits in the rain, staggered by his empty hands.

 _I was too slow._

Kara lands beside him, frowning as she asks, "Where is everyone?"

Barry's chest hurts, holding onto thin air like he can somehow _will_ Oliver to come back to him. _Please,_ he begs an unlistening universe, _please._

"Barry?" Kara asks, placing a hand on his arm, and he'd be more ashamed of the tears if he wasn't so _scared_ , shaking slightly because _I lost Ollie, I lost Ollie, I lost Ollie._ "What happened?"

"I –" He swallows, drawing in a deep breath to get himself back under control. "They're – they're inside," he says, clearing his throat. "The Dominators, they – they took – Sara, and Thea, and Dig – Ray –"

Felicity dares to step outside, calling, "Barry?" He's sure she doesn't expect a response – why else would he linger in the open, where the aliens could take him? – but Kara answers for him.

"We're over here!"

The rest of the team – a sorry party of four: Felicity, Mick, Jax, and Stein – appear.

"What the hell happened?" Mick asks in a growl. Looking around, he takes in the missing party and snorts a laugh. "You gotta be kidding me. Where's Haircut?"

Jax speaks for Stein, panning slowly as they tally up the numbers. "No way," he says in a low voice. "Where's—?"

Felicity says the word none of them are willing to, voice trembling as she asks, "Oliver?"

She steps up to him and her tearful gaze hurts, her demand sharp and to his core. "Where's Oliver?"

"I – I'm sorry," he breathes, flinching when she lifts her hand to her mouth in a sob. "I'm so sorry, I'm—"

 _I tried, I tried_ , he thinks, his own eyes burning. _I tried._

. o .

For the next two hours Barry subsists on protein bars and Kara's confidence.

"We can find them," she assures him, over and over, adopting the Team Leader role easily as they regroup in the cortex. "Once Felicity and Cisco have a location, we'll bring them home and we'll stop the Dominators from hurting anyone. Okay?"

He looks at her, baleful, doubtful, and nods. _Okay._

His own team ( _team is a loose term_ ) looks at him with apprehension. He hasn't missed the fact that Kara is the only one willing to get close enough to touch him, like they're afraid he'll hurt them if he tries. _I'm not gonna hurt you_ , he promises, trying to meet their eyes.

Cisco's are accusatory and scared, his back to a wall; Caitlin's avert and Iris is with Wally, scarcely looking at him. He can feel the _you failed_ in the air.

Doesn't matter what Oliver said: as far as they're concerned, the line in the sand remains, and he's not on the popular side.

He does have Kara on his side, though, which is comforting. Her presence is steadying; her voice equally so. When she addresses the team, she takes front-and-center. Barry does not shy from their scrutiny, but he keeps half a step and to the side of her. It's a moving visual, reinforcing the transference of power; his supportive stance visibly marks the shift in leadership.

He was never in charge – _Ollie_ was in charge – and without Oliver's grounding presence he doesn't want to be. Kara is more experienced with aliens; Kara can handle it.

He hopes.

. o .

It helps to have something to do. Even if Rene's damage prevents him from cozying up to his superhuman pals, he's cordial enough that Kara and Barry can work with him. Rory all but pees his pants with excitement when Kara lands, an undertone, _holy shit_ only audible to Barry. Together they take down the good doctor Laura Washington, reclaiming the device Felicity claims – and if she does Barry knows it must be true – will help them track down the Dominators.

When she calls him to the Arrow Cave, he's anxious. _What did you find?_ he worries.

Or, worse: _What didn't you find?_

"They're in space," Felicity blurts out, and it's so absurd that Barry laughs.

When Felicity fails to discredit it, he can't help it. "Y—they're in _space_ ," he repeats incredulously, because if they were in another universe they'd be closer.

Nonplussed, Mick grunts, "I'll phone in the newbs." Barry turns to look at him, eyebrows up. "Assuming they can park the Waverider without breaking it, they should be able to track the alien-things down," he elaborates.

A contingency plan clicks. "Kara, you can fly, could you—?" Barry tries, turning to her, but she's already shaking her head.

"Can you run in space?" she explains.

He tips his head in a concessionary nod. "Touché."

The sinking feeling returns – _they're in space_ – but it's accompanied by a sense of growing anticipation. _We know where they are._ They'll find them, they'll get them, they'll take down the Dominators.

Kara has said it all along. Find, get, stop. _One, two, three_.

. o .

Why can't it ever be that easy?

. o .

When Ollie's boots hit the soil, Barry Flashes to him and almost tackles him, hugging him so hard he thinks he might break a rib or two accidentally. Oliver grunts and lets him hold on, waiting for him to loosen his grip before saying in a low tone, " _Barry_."

"You're here, you're here, you're here," he says stupidly, scarcely paying attention to the fact that they're not alone, holding on. "Ollie, you're—"

Oliver sighs, reaching up to cup the back of his head and say gruffly, "I'm here." With gentle force he pries Barry off, holding him by the shoulders and giving him a patented _calm down_ glare. "Okay?"

Barry nods, flushing as red as his suit as he steps back. "What – what happened to you guys?" he asks, running his hands down Oliver's sides, reflexively checking for injuries. "Did they hurt you, are you okay?"

"Barry," Oliver warns, catching his hands, and he realizes that he's not exactly putting up a show of strength for the rest of the team, but dammit, _I thought I lost you, Ollie._

"They didn't – you're not hurt?" he insists.

Oliver pushes him back a step, not unkind but firm. "I'm fine."

It hurts, but Barry nods, stepping back farther, giving him space. _Whatever I did,_ he thinks reflexively, _I'm sorry._

Then his chest hurts because, _You know what you did._

 _I tried,_ he pleads.

 _Trying isn't good enough,_ the universe rebukes, in Oliver's straight-backed stoicism.

. o .

They rally in the airplane hangar, making plans.

Team Legends will travel back in time to get some intel on the Dominators, with Cisco and Felicity tagging along. Ray will stay with Oliver, Sara, and he to meet the new President. Kara volunteered to sit it out – with a tightness in her jaw that Barry wasn't used to; _I didn't know she was capable of being angry_ – and Caitlin, Stein, and Jax are playing rear guard. Last-resort. Joe, Iris, and Wally are on standby, should worse come to worst.

As for Oliver, he's brisk, contributing but miles away, mentally. He's caught up on something and Barry wants to ask him about it – _you aren't the person we need when you're distracted_ – but Oliver puts up a wall whenever he gets too close. He isn't mean, but he's different. Blunt. To the point.

Standing stiffly beside Barry, he hasn't said it directly, but three points are implicitly clear: _no, they didn't hurt me; no, I don't know what they wanted; and no, I'm not mad at you._

Barry isn't sure about the last point, but he has bigger problems.

A much bigger one, in fact, when their new President fails to make an appearance.

When one of the government's own turns on them, Barry is bitterly reminded of Rene's stiff-shouldered response. He can't help but wonder when public sentiment soured so much towards metahumans. Maybe it's a Central thing, he speculates, with their fawning Flash day ceremonies and general positive response to metas. The world is bigger than its six hundred thousand residents, and sheer probability states that a lot of those outside the city would despise metas.

But it isn't _metahumans_ that the government agent has a problem with.

It's a metahuman. Singular.

 _You._

In exchange for everyone he loves.

He feels his stomach sink in his chest. _Give yourself up and they'll be fine._

 _Refuse and they'll all die._

What would he have said if the same offer had been presented to him at the time of the singularity? Or _Flashpoint?_

 _Your life for theirs,_ the universe proposes.

He was selfish enough to back down the first two times. Selfish enough to say _There's another way._

When Oliver takes him aside and growls, "You are _not_ turning yourself in" there's a dangerous tone in his voice. Barry doesn't say anything, letting Oliver list off all the reasons why it won't work. _Doesn't matter_ , he thinks dully. _I'm not letting you be collateral._

The team assemble at his request and he tells them. He's expecting no resistance, even though Oliver is present, which is why it surprises him when they reject the idea. Even Cisco insists he stay, which hurts, because _God this would be easier if you hated me_.

It's terrible timing, but he thinks that it might be better to have won Cisco's friendship back – however tentatively, however long it lasts – than to have gone to his grave without it.

He still wishes the line in the sand were clearer, that they weren't all feeling _unified_ in this moment, because it would be so much easier to lie to them.

 _I have to do this,_ he thinks.

He lets them make their case. Smiles and knows there's real emotion there. _It's been an honor_ , he tells all of them. _Working with you_.

Oliver's stance shifts and Barry knows something in his face gives him away. _I'm sorry,_ his clenched fists say as they relax.

Then the world slows down and Barry takes off, leaving nothing but thunder.

He runs like it's the last shot he'll ever get, focusing on the movement as much as he can while targeting a specific destination. The pulse of Speed Force under his skin is vital to him, the lightning like a dance of its own. _Run_ , it tells him. _Join me._

 _Soon enough._

With one last Speed-breath, he slows down, skating into view. The ship isn't hard to find. From within, the Dominators stir, an electric horror curling in his stomach as they loom over him, eight, nine feet tall.

He doesn't kneel or bow or submit in any way, just takes a step forward, hands extended to either side. "I'm alone," he tells them. "I'm unarmed."

 _Barry Allen,_ a Dominator hisses, stepping forward. _It's been a while._

Barry swallows, forcing a breath in so he can speak. "Whatever he did to you," he says slowly, knowing that he's speaking on behalf of a man who won't act for another forty years, for _himself_ in a future which has come to fruition for them, "I'm sorry."

The Dominator sneers at him, bearing those long fangs, and with a single powerful stroke it knocks stars across his vision, his legs crumpling underneath him as he blacks out.


	12. Credere Amico

**"Trust your friend."**

Barry disappears; the Dominators retreat.

Were the situation not so dire, it would be a relief to check the satellite feed at STAR Labs and see a pod-free Earth. Instead, it creates a quiet, halting panic in Oliver's chest. He can barely hear Felicity and Cisco's conversation, gaze arrested by the empty image. The Dominators don't belong on Earth, but _they should be there_.

Their absence can only mean one thing.

Closing his eyes, Oliver takes in a deep breath. There's a tension in the room that no amount of calming speeches can suppress and neither he nor Sara nor Kara attempt to give them. They let it linger between them, building to unbearable proportions, until he opens his eyes and stares at the blank monitor.

They can't track Barry because the alien ships have an in-built device that creates a technological dead zone, but they can track the armada. They haven't left Earth's orbit – twenty minutes of prep time is still a tall order for any species to vanish into deep space – but Oliver knows it's only a matter of time. Once they're gone, their team won't find them any time soon.

He could spend the rest of his life searching for Barry and never find him.

The urgency to their search is palpable and Oliver misses Barry's calming presence, the way the lightning warms the room without overpowering it. It's like a safety blanket, a tie-in to Barry's big smiles and enthusiasm. The gentling power it has cannot be underestimated: Oliver has seen it work on kids and adults, even animals. He hopes – dares to hope – that it has a mildly persuasive effect on his enemies.

Assuming they haven't disabled his Speed somehow.

Then it clicks. _His Speed._

"Thermal image scan," he says out loud. "Felicity," he adds, meeting her eyes, and the _oh my God_ realization is quick to sink in as she swaps the images.

The alien ships provide a blanket of heat, disguising the overall field in white noise, but the aliens on board are still distinct, warmer than the metal around them. Including, Oliver sees with heart-pounding triumph, an unmistakably bright point near the center of the swarm.

"Terrific," Ray says out loud, caught between actual enthusiasm and doomed concern. "We found him. Now how do we get him out?"

Oliver hears a whirring noise as a gun powers up, Mick hoisting his heat gun and offering gruffly, "The old-fashioned way."

"He's not wrong," Nate chimes in – Oliver glares at him, agitated and eager to proceed – "the Waverider is equipped for combat."

"I always loved _Galactica_ ," Ray muses.

Then the bright white point on screen vanishes.

The silence in the room is a glass sheet of ice. Mick breaks it. "What the hell?" he growls, leaning towards the monitor. "He turn off his speed or something?"

 _He can't_. Oliver can't speak, feeling that choking tightness in his throat again, very aware that their odds of finding Barry alive are decreasing by the second. "We know where he is," he forces out loud. "That's enough."

"You can't actually be serious," Felicity says, turning in her seat to look at him. Oliver snaps another arrow to his arm, meeting her gaze with dead-seriousness. "It would be suicidal."

 _I don't care._ If he waits, they don't have a chance.

"Pilot team," he rattles off, addressing the group as a whole, "Felicity, Ray, Nate. Ground team: Sara, Kara, Caitlin, Cisco, and myself. Backup: Firestorm, Mick."

"What about us?" Rory asks in that unearthly rasp, still bedecked in his suit, gesturing at himself, Curtis, and Rene.

Rene scoffs. "We're the backup-backup, aren't we?"

"Couldn't have said it better myself," Oliver replies, "let's go."

. o .

"So how much ammo does this beauty have?" Ray asks, holding onto the control console with unmistakable affection. Oliver can almost hear him reciting, _Captain's log, Stardate 2356.01._ It's written in every excited line of his shoulders.

Were he not vital to the operation Oliver would knock him out to shut him up, but as the Atom suit mastermind he's irreplaceably skilled.

"Enough to annihilate a small army," Firestorm – Jax – responds. " _Small_ being the operative word. I'm talking fifteen hundred shots, max."

It's a sizeable number, but looking at the swarm of two hundred and fifty pods, Oliver is very aware that it's only six shots per vessel. Ray does the same math in his head, whistling low. "Don't waste any bullets, is what you're saying."

"It takes twenty-four hours to reload so yes – don't waste any bullets."

Kara asks, "Are we sure they can handle this? Do either of you have any actual combat experience?"

"Listen, sweetheart, we've been doing this longer than you've been born," Mick says, munching away on a stash of chips. "Guy's gotta eat," he growls when Oliver glares at him, even the slightest grievance worth complaining about.

"Anyone else want a snack break?" Oliver asks, turning to the rest of the team. Cisco and Caitlin haven't said a word, shell-shocked, and Sara keeps her silence and her arms folded.

It's Kara who steps forward. "We need to disable their communications system. If they coordinate an assault—" She shakes her head.

Informatively, Nate mimes an explosion with his hands.

"Already on it," Felicity responds absentmindedly, tapping away at the keys.

" _Is there any way I can assist you?"_ a calm feminine voice asks, almost startling Felicity out of her seat.

"Yes – don't do that. And disable the alien comms, if you can."

" _I'm afraid we're out of range._ "

"The Waverider's satellite radius is only about three hundred yards," Firestorm chimes in helpfully. "Three times the length of a football field."

" _Once in range, I can scramble their satellite feed and temporarily disable their comm systems,_ " the AI informs.

A loud _boom_ rocks the entire ship as an energy burst strikes the helm. "Guess our alien buddies figured out we're here," Ray says, steadying the ship.

"Same party trick we used," Firestorm notes grimly. "Thermal imaging. Our visual shields don't mask the ship's systems, just its appearance."

"That's our cue," Sara says, fighting staff in hand. "Follow me."

She leads Caitlin, Cisco, Kara, and himself to the docking chamber on the lowest portion of the ship, the Waverider shuddering with another pulse impact. Oliver thinks, _Warning shots_ and wonders if the Dominator's aren't in fact scared of their odds in open combat, too.

 _Hold your fire,_ he counsels Ray in a growl, even as the Waverider lurches underneath him. _Six shots a ship._

They take both ejection shuttles, each capable of carrying two people comfortably and three in a pinch. With only two seatbelts, Oliver doesn't miss the fact that the return trip – assuming there _is_ one, which is questionable with Captain Palmer at the wheel – could be a problem.

As the bulkiest crew member, Oliver copilots with Sara while Kara, Cisco, and Caitlin cram in the remaining shuttle. Even with Sara's cool instructions – to herself and as a step-by-step broadcast to the opposite pod to Cisco, meticulously laying out both the startup and shutdown sequences – it's still a disarming experience to strap himself in.

The size of a small Volkswagen, the shuttle isn't a confidence-inspiring vehicle to be entering the dark abyss of space in. But, as Thea astutely pointed out on their first jaunt in the great beyond, he's already been on twice as many spaceships as he anticipated being on in his life. What's a perilous journey in a third?

A loud _boom_ shakes the ship. Oliver can almost hear Nate and Ray's whoops, their disproportionate enthusiasm a helpful cold-wash to his nerves. They're like kids on a cowboy mission, he thinks with exasperated disinterest, double-checking his belt.

"All right," Sara says, "wake 'em up, lure 'em out, shoot 'em down."

" _Just like_ Star Trek," Cisco responds sagely. Then: " _For real?_ _Y'all have never seen—_ "

The shuttle lights up. "Cisco, you know where the emergency stop is?" Sara cuts in.

A beat. " _The big red button?_ "

"That's the one. It should protect the ship's systems from the short-circuit Gideon will send out. Don't hit it until we're inside four hundred yards or you'll lose too much altitude." Flipping on a switch, Sara plunges the interior of the ship into darkness, as cloaked as it can be. "On my mark," Sara counts. Oliver can't see them, but he can hear the other ship quiet as it, too, powers down nonessentials.

Oliver checks his belt one last time. _This is suicidal,_ he thinks, but after everything, it's hard to feel scared for himself. All he can think about is that bright white dot, somewhere in the swarm.

"Three."

The ship shudders and Oliver can almost feel a response building underneath the floor, Ray's hands stilled only with an effort.

"Two."

Safety unlocks; the ship hums with retaliation in its chest, _ready, set,_ _ **go**_ _—_

" _One_."

They launch and Ray fires.

. o .

The plasma blasts meet alien resistance, carving a narrow no man's land between the two assaults. With the swarm activated, it's more difficult to find their target, but the center of the colony rotates in place, leaving its hundreds of compatriots to close in on the recon team. They loop back, Oliver's stomach doing a similar loop as the ship kicks into what he can only classify as hyper drive, zipping back towards home base, thousands of Dominators and hundreds of ships on their tails.

It's an all-out feeding frenzy, the Waverider launching continuous purple-blue pulses with the aliens firing back red, angry spurs into space. The silence strikes Oliver, an eerie lack of evidence grounding the lethal blasts as they tear into each other. Even as Dominator ships disintegrate and their own pods take – per that same calm mechanical voice – thirty-two percent damage, they fly without fear, trained in on a target.

Closing in, Oliver reflects how untimely it would be for one of those violet pulses to take down their shuttles, but Ray's shots glide past them without contact.

 _Three hundred yards_. He holds onto his seat as they approach, crossing six thousand feet, five thousand feet, four thousand feet, three thousand feet—

"Nine hundred yards," Sara barks into the comm.

" _Locked and loaded,"_ Felicity replies.

"Eight-fifty."

Oliver wants to close his eyes but knows it wouldn't make a difference – impact would come just as surely.

He's played Russian roulette, but Chicken with a swarm of furious aliens on their tails is truly a first for Oliver Queen.

"Seven hundred yards," Sara shouts.

" _Ready to send out the pulse,_ " Felicity says.

"Send in ten," Sara instructs, "nine…"

At _four_ , she shouts, "Power down!"

Oliver hadn't realized how loud their little shuttle was until Sara slits its throat, leaving them dead in the water, the ongoing fireworks still silent around them. It's an incredible sight and under different circumstances Oliver might be moved by it, but all he can think is, _Shut them down_ as they approach.

And then, on cue, the red fire disappears.

The violet ceases, too, their shuttle tilting ponderously towards Earth as they bob in the open orbit. The furious shrieks of Dominators are almost audible as their ships halt in place.

Just as the tilt of the shuttle becomes dangerously close to a freefall, Sara says, "Powering back on…" and holds the same startup button for three gut-wrenching seconds.

Then the shuttle hums, leveling out as the bare bones systems yawn to life. "Cisco, how're you guys doing?" Sara checks in.

" _Shaken, but not stirred._ "

"Now comes the fun part," Sara says, creeping through the field of paralyzed alien ships, Cisco, Caitlin, and Kara tight on their tail. A few red shots fire at them, prompting Sara to drift up and then down to avoid, Dominator ships falling to pieces under the fire. They pass through the interior of the swarm without stirring a mass rebellion, the missing command failing to provide the critical orders to attack.

The heart of the hive remains intact, watchdogs firing explosively at their approaching shuttles. They have no defense system to speak of, but the Waverider sends long-range pulses out to help take out the players, necessitating only that the ground crew avoid being incinerated by either party. Utterly helpless, Oliver watches the red stars burst across their field of view, contacting violet pulses and exploding in silence.

They finally break the defensive ring – Oliver can almost hear Ray and Nate high-fiving – and dive in the gap. The main ship is unostentatious, only twice the size of its guardians, but there is no docking system and the only landing approach crosses Oliver's mind seconds before Sara executes it.

Gaining speed, they charge, piercing the hull and crashing _into_ the ship. The interior is chaos as red emergency lights flash, _hull breach, hull breach,_ a second thunderous impact tipping organized chaos into disorganized panic.

The only reason death does not swiftly find them all is the sealant effect their ships have, jammed in the pod on either side. The Dominators furiously claim their weapons and fire laser blasts at them, bathing the front shield in golden light.

The assault halts abruptly as frost accumulates on the windshield, the agonized shrieks of Dominators preceding a stunning silence as the front shield is pried up.

It smells like permafrost, thick, tundratic, as dozens of aliens lie in frozen agony on the floor. Caitlin's eyes are preternaturally purple when she meets his, but Cisco – daring to put a hand on her forearm – calms them to a human hazel. He has his goggles on, shoulders back. _Let's go._

Somewhat dazed by the sight, Oliver follows Sara's lead, raising a questioning eyebrow at Caitlin and Cisco – _where's Kara?_ – before golden fire forces him to focus. " _Stay back,_ " Caitlin commands, hands up, freezing their fire before it comes close. The Dominators, agitated and afraid, charge, several breaking through her frozen fog. Cisco blasts them off and Sara knocks both out with her staff, the remaining aliens converging on them with stunning swiftness.

It's an all-out melee, Oliver fighting for his life – not daring to fire an arrow without a clean shot – as the others strive to do the same. He loses track of time, aware that the remaining ships will be working furiously to restore their comms. With punishing rigor, he puts down four aliens in quick succession, backing off and breathing hard when the flashing red light – _hull breach, hull breach_ – becomes the only one he sees.

"Sara?" he calls, a groan at his side drawing his attention. "Hey," he says, crouching beside his fallen comrade – she's cold. _Caitlin_. He has a flashback of a cold hand closing around his shoulder, _Frost meta_ clicking. Still: no time to address it. "C'mon," he tells her, sliding an arm gently underneath her shoulders and pulling her to her feet. "You're okay. We'll fix you up on the ship." There's a rakish line of claw marks down her side, but it's not bleeding – thank you, cold powers. She seems sluggish, though, which worries him. Cisco emerges from the fading cold-fog and promptly takes a hold of Caitlin, arm under her shoulders.

"I've got you," he promises softly. Looking up at Oliver, he turns his head side to side and asks, "Where's Sara?"

They hear a loud _crash_ around the corner and Oliver runs, fear clogging his throat because he will not lose Sara, _he will not_. As he rounds the bend he finds two aliens lying in an unconscious sprawl on top of each other, Sara's face flushed with exertion and contentment as she shoulders her staff. "That all of them?" she asks.

"Probably not," Oliver replies. "Stay," he adds to Caitlin and Cisco. Cisco frowns but obliges when Caitlin nods slightly. "We'll be back."

Sara and he know these halls well enough to navigate to the central atrium, Oliver's senses wired to respond to the slightest movement. They encounter eerie silence where guards should be, the hairs on Oliver's arms standing up as he keeps a hand close to the throwing knife in his sleeve-strap.

It's almost inaudible, but Oliver still turns and almost launches the knife at Kara's chest. "Just me, just me," she assures softly. "Where are Caitlin and Cisco?"

"With the shuttles," Oliver answers brusquely, heart rate still up. "Did you—?"

Kara shakes her head, a little frustrated noise escaping her.

"Then we keep looking," Sara finishes, even as the ship rocks with a thunderous _boom_. Kara hovers to keep her balance, Oliver stumbling a little before regaining his. Sara moves ahead, unimpeded, a wolf on a hunt, silent and steady. The next _boom_ is quieter than the first, but the third is ear-splittingly close, knocking Oliver and Sara off their feet and plunging the hallway into darkness.

"Follow me," a voice says to his right, Kara's hand on his arm a fleeting signal in the dark. "Fifteen steps," she guides. "Turn left."

It's unnerving, being guided through the darkness, but Oliver doesn't back down and neither does Sara, the second set of footsteps reassuring in the quiet. They're interrupted by warning _booms_ every thirty seconds or so, clear signals to evacuate or be destroyed.

Ignoring the message – _not without Barry_ – Oliver pauses when the silence becomes perfect. "Kara?" he whispers.

There's a whimper, barely audible, and then a thin voice replies, "Ollie?"

Oliver's heart skips a beat, flying across the hall and skidding to a halt, reaching for a Barry he can't see but Barry, Barry, _Barry._ "I'm here," he says, feeling blindly in the air. "We're here." Kara keeps up a continuous stream of _don't move, I'm almost done_ and Oliver hears straps being loosened. Sara holds point-guard, ready to give commands as the ship rocks again and another pained whimper interrupts the anxious silence.

Oliver reaches forward blindly and catches Barry's sleeve, fear dissolving as a rush of relief – profound, world-altering _relief_ – sinks into his own skin.

"You shouldn't be here," Barry rasps. Oliver needs to see his eyes, to tell him forcefully that he wouldn't be anywhere _else,_ overwhelmed and shaken by the fact that Barry's _alive._

He can say nothing, though, and jumps when another _boom_ detonates nearby.

Then a final strap unpeels and Kara says, "Come here." Oliver hears hands slide on fabric as she picks Barry up, eliciting a long, low groan. "Let's go," she tells Sara and Oliver.

It takes every ounce of willpower not to insist on carrying him because Kara can fly and Kara has super-strength. To her, Barry weighs nothing and experiences none of the halting turbulence that Oliver does whenever the ground lurches. The ship is still blacked out even in the pod room, primary systems failing, but following Kara's instructions they find their way to the impromptu dock site.

"Let's go," Oliver barks, switching over to his Arrow voice as another loud _boom_ erupts overhead, the entire ship vibrating with the force of it.

Sara and Cisco help Caitlin into the less damaged shuttle as Oliver climbs into the opposite one, Kara lowering Barry into the space beside him. In the semi-light, Oliver can see how gingerly he holds an arm to his chest, little else revealed in the twilight other than his tiny, hitching breaths. Forgoing a seatbelt, he straps Barry in, wincing when the ship rocks and Barry lets out a thin moan of pain, hunching over his stomach.

Sara climbs in the shuttle carefully, wedging herself on Barry's opposite side so she can get to the controllers, strapping herself in as well. With a forceful _crunch,_ Kara seals the front panel back onto the front of the shuttle, tapping the lid twice. _Good luck._

 _God speed._

Then she pushes carefully on the shuttle, metal grinding on metal as it escapes its chokehold in the pod's side. She leaves them wedged to offer the same treatment for her own vessel, climbing inside before they open a true breach to space.

Even with the extra help, Oliver doesn't know if the shuttle has enough oomph to escape the clawing hold of the pod, straining mightily against its iron captive. Just when it seems certain that they'll tear the thing in half, they lurch free, flying through a storm of red pulses as the Waverider zaps its own quarries in the distance.

 _Comms up,_ Oliver thinks grimly, holding onto his seat for his life as they soar through the sea of alien pods. The two-seatbelt rule is painstaking under such circumstances as Sara jerks the wheel virtually continuously to avoid head-on collisions with pods or fire. They're small and nimble enough to avoid the worst contact, skirting like a rowboat around a battleship, surviving only by their own agility.

He's so caught up in the melee that it isn't until the Waverider's doors close behind them that he acknowledges the passenger beside him.

The Waverider jumps underneath them, a faint _yeehaw!_ perceptible in another universe above them, but Oliver only notices the pallor to Barry's expression and the ginger way he holds his left arm to his chest. There's a black-and-blue bruise swathing half of his face, cut lip still bleeding. There's no acknowledgment, Barry's gaze fixed ahead, tense shoulders shaking slightly.

Kara lifts the front panel clean off this time and Oliver unbuckles Barry. Sara climbs out and takes off for the main floor, a fierce _let me handle this_ aura around her as she takes the stairs two at a time. Out of the corner of his eye Oliver sees Cisco help Caitlin out and walks her to the staircase, but he can't take his attention from Barry.

"Barry?" Oliver says, ignoring the way the Waverider shivers under fire and reaching out to cup the unbruised side of his jaw.

Barry turns his head but looks over his shoulder, brow furrowing as he reaches out – another soft groan slipping past – and fumbles a hand against Oliver's chest. "Ollie?" he tries again, lost and hurting, whining when Oliver hugs him, gentle as he can, because _Barry, Barry, Barry._ "I can't see," he whimpers, Oliver's heart jerking as he shushes him.

"We'll fix it," he assures, certain. "It's okay, it's okay."

"I can't see," he repeats, tears bleeding out onto Oliver's shoulder. "I – why'd you –"

"Let's get you to the med bay," Oliver says, rubbing Barry's back gently even as the Waverider rumbles underneath them. "C'mon. C'mon, Bar."

Kara helps him lift Barry out of the shuttle, his face even more ashen in the light, eyes undamaged but unseeing, wandering around the room without taking any of it in. "Where am I?" he asks, legs trembling underneath him.

"Home," Oliver replies, steadying hand under his shoulders.

The onslaught relents ("Told you we could give those bastards the slip!" Nate hoots, high-fiving Ray), an almost-calm overtaking the ship. ("With forty-two bullets to spare," Firestorm replies, sinking into a chair.) Sara's commanding voice ("Vibe, you feeling up to this?") oversees the situation upstairs, but Oliver doesn't care. He lets Kara pick up Barry and follows them to the med bay, never letting go of Barry's sleeve.

 _I am not letting you run this time,_ he thinks fiercely, aching tenderness extinguishing any thoughts of a rant when Kara sets him down on a bed. _C'mere,_ his arms entreat, folding around Barry, safety louder than Cisco's affirmation ("Bring it on," he says, standing in the same shuttle room with his palms up, ready to dismantle the ships because in the temporal zone everything is strings and strings _vibrate_ ). _It's okay,_ his heartbeat promises against Barry's ear, in a way that Felicity's relieved exhale can only partially encapsulate in an overdue hug a lifetime later.

"You're gonna be okay," Oliver says softly, here and now and uncontestable.


	13. Distrust

**Warnings for non-graphic depictions of torture, minimal violence, lotta whump. Here there be angst, but as always: silver linings (aka snuggles).**

The encounter can be described in eight words: they strap him down and make him scream.

. o .

The Dominators have a lot of anger to get off their chests.

The physical assault is tooth and claw, but the mental attack is a series of images, superimposing but not excluding the pain, letting him neither run from nor towards it.

Crushed between them, he's forced to watch a bolt of red lightning move from Dominator to Dominator, _Kin to Kin._

Watching through their eyes, Barry cannot see the attack play out, but he knows the seemingly inexplicable reason they drop dead. He's seen speedsters kill; whatever hearts the Dominators – _Kin_ – have, the speedster shreds.

 _After wiping out an entire pack, the Rogue lightning skis to a halt, invisible but for a blur of red in their midst._ (Something sharp rakes his left leg – he arches away, to no avail.) _A Kin – through whom the others watch the scene unfold – is on the ground, staring at its killer. Its lightning becomes the Rogue's signature, unforgettable to their undying memory. When it slows, the Kin sees a recognizable face: an older, much older_ – ( _Barry_.)

 _Rogue._

 _Surrounded by hundreds of dead Kin is the Rogue. Some still writhe in their dying throes. Kin are strong, but even they cannot outlast their own mortality._ (A claw digs into his right thigh so deep he half hopes they'll hit an artery.) _They die and finally the narrator Kin's seeing-eye closes, consigning the rest to oblivion._

 _A second vision brings a brilliant bolt of yellow lightning, standing in the dark-gray atrium of their largest ship and speaking before a fraction of their remaining colony, the High Council._ (Ones digs all fourteen of its claws into his chest at once with hole-punch precision; he bits his lip hard enough to draw blood.) _The alien – the Stranger – has much to say, identifying the Rogue which tore down their Kin._ (A second repeats the tactic, and then a third, and then a—) _It warns them of the danger of confronting the Rogue at its peak and suggests they eliminate the threat before it annihilates their species, returning their fallen._ Follow me, _the Stranger suggests,_ and I will bring you peace. (His ears ring with how loudly they hiss to each other.)

 _Their hatred for the Rogue outweighs their caution of the Stranger, employing the Stranger's magic – the very same as the Rogue's, as fortune would have it – to form a passage for their remaining ships._ (Something _crunches_ down on his left arm.) _The Stranger agrees to stay to hold off the Rogue so that their passage might be unimpeded, asking only that they spare the Strange Ones like itself in exchange for its benevolence._

 _A species of few debts and fewer favors, the Kin forget the Stranger and emerge an armada in a very different world, testing their strength against the alien species which harbors the Rogue and Stranger both and finding great weakness within their defenses._ (He feels a chilling numbness overtake him as one leaves its claws in his back for an eternity.) _The Stranger was right: the future is impregnable, but the past is vulnerable. They take several of the aliens – they are not special, not like the Stranger, and therefore fair meat – and avenge their fallen._

(The Speed is next to fall, dripping from his veins as cold sweeps the room, maintaining its elevation through sheer force alone.) _They know they can annihilate the remainder of the alien species before it can ever pose a threat to the Kin, but they are small in number and their resources are few. They regroup, lying in wait for an opportunity._ (They back off for a moment, unseen, chattering, waiting for something he dares not guess.) _They learn the alien language. They learn how to send messages._

 _When they grow thin and weak from their lives in the Abyss, desperation forces them to descend once more to conquer Terra._ (The lightning rises to the surface, tentatively fixing damage.)

 _First, they must find the Rogue._

 _This time, they succeed._

(And the feeding frenzy begins.)

. o .

The suit saved his life.

Had it not been for its protective shield, those four-inch claws would have dug in a lot deeper.

As it stands, his left arm is so mangled they don't even try to take it out of the sleeve to assess it, stabilizing it in place with a sling. They disinfect the wounds and he blacks out, coming to with a noisy, throbbing headache on the entire left half of his face. ( _A Kin rose before him, redemptive anger in its chest, as it lifted a hand and struck down the Rogue before a starving colony._ ) The almost-lethal wound in his thigh is excruciating, but not broad enough for stitches, a live-with-it injury that persists as someone – two someones – address what they can.

He whines and twists away from their mediating hands, a pained _go-away_ whimper unheeded as they work for hours, it seems. They're trying to help, he knows, but he doesn't want it, doesn't want anyone near him or touching him or _hurting him._

They scrounge up a blanket from somewhere and it's put around his shoulders, a shield that he draws tight to his chest with his right hand. _Go away_ , he insists, hunching inward despite the discomfort. _Go away._

A second blanket follows the first and the additional weight does what healing hands cannot, capturing warmth and calming him down a little. With the shield in hand, he hunches inward and ducks his head.

A hand tries to coax his right hand from its grip around the blanket, _just for a moment,_ it suggests, and he feels a few mutinous tears slip onto the blanket because _no, no, no._ He senses rather than hears the other person leave, not sure if he feels safe alone with just one person.

The hand disappears and he feels his chest tighten with anticipation and fear – _where'd you go?_ – before it slides to rest against the back of his neck, scratching softly.

 _I'm right here_ , it says, unpresumptuous and patient. _It can wait._

The gentle, undemanding contact relaxes some of the choking tightness in his chest, his head sinking to rest against a nearby shoulder. "I've got you," Oliver murmurs, Barry hunched in his blankets but held loosely in the embrace. "You're okay."

Gradually, almost painfully, he lets go of the blankets and reaches out to hold onto Oliver's suit. Oliver's hand stays where it is, a promise – _I'm not gonna leave you_ – as much as a comfort. _I'm not gonna hurt you_ , it insists. "Let me help," Oliver suggests.

Barry nods once and tenses when he feels a hand against the zip on his suit, right up against the collar. Oliver waits, pushing nothing, just there, and at last Barry exhales and nods again, breathing shallowly to keep his calm.

It doesn't hurt and Barry is almost grateful that he can't see, can't look at all the damage he _feels._ Oliver doesn't flinch from it, sliding his hand down Barry's arm and carefully pulling his hand free so he can tug off the glove. It takes some careful maneuvering to get his right arm out of the sleeve, but they get it off, material awkwardly hanging behind his back but freeing his right arm.

Oliver hands him a cloth and Barry frowns, fingers closing around it curiously before Oliver tugs gently on the suit, inching it towards his left side, and Barry gets the memo. Putting the cloth between his teeth, he bites down hard and lets Oliver remove his arm from its sling, lets him ease the suit off with agonizing slowness even though it hurts, it hurts, because there is a promise in those hands that he knows, an implicit truthfulness in the way he works.

 _This'll hurt,_ it says apologetically. _But not forever._

The arm is so, so tender and it drags a long, deep groan from his chest when Oliver balances his arm in one hand and uses his free one to wrap it up properly. His face is covered in tears by the time Oliver finishes, sling gently replaced and blankets tucked back around his torso, the warmth from them outstandingly present against his skin. He tugs out the cloth and drops it carelessly off to one side, reaching up to brush his own face dry as gingerly as he can.

When Oliver pulls him into a hug again, Barry rests his forehead against his shoulder and feels _tired_ for the first time since he got back. Which is exactly why Oliver's fingers drum against his side, his voice a light warning when he says, "Bar."

He grunts, acknowledging it.

"Don't fall asleep."

"Mm."

A poke to his side makes him flinch. "Don't fall asleep," Oliver repeats.

"Mm." Barry yowls when Oliver pokes him again. " _Stop_."

"You have a concussion," Oliver reminds, and Barry can hear in his voice that it's not the first time but the words are chasing tail in his head, sleep dragging him down by the feet, con-cuss-shin…

Con-cuss-shin… shin … shin – Kin.

"I know what they wanted," he mumbles, even as Oliver flattens his palm against Barry's side, apology and curiosity all in one. "They … their family … they got … their … Stranger."

It makes sense in his head – _They were conquerors but their family was killed, they got scared and saved by a speedster, their search dragged on for sixty years because the Stranger told them killing me would save their family_ – but it refuses to spill out in the right order. "Sixty … years. Save their – their – family. They wanted …."

It hurts, suddenly, knowing what the Dominators wanted. _Atonement._

 _You killed my mother,_ he shouted at another speedster half a lifetime ago, _why?!_

 _If you want to know that,_ the Reverse Flash sneered, _then you're going to have to catch me._

Impossibly, optimistically, they hoped for the same thing he did: _Erasure._

If the pain never happened, then it wouldn't have to be felt anymore.

"I killed … their family," he grates out. "Ee-ohh-bard. Told them. How to f—find me."

 _It's a memory but it's not a memory, a peaceful treaty between the Kin and the aliens, shaking hands in a year that begins with three, except the Kin multiply in the Abyss and run out of space, the Kin must conquer or_ **die.**

Barry shudders, a full body shiver that keeps up because he doesn't want to know, he doesn't want to know but they _demand_ his attention—

 _The aliens fall to the Kin, and the Kin would rise to conquer Terra except the lightning bolt is among them, dismantling their colony, striking them down as the Kin scream because pain-fear-rage is spreading like a fire among them. By the time the First has registered the threat the Last has fallen, the Rogue halting at the edge of the warzone with lightning in its lungs and desperation in its heart, the Pyrrhic victor of the War of Worlds._

 _And from a world away comes a whisper, a breath:_ I was too late to stop this.

The emotional riptide tries to drag him under, conqueror and conquered both, victor and victim, hero and villain.

 _Who's the villain now Flash? Who's the villain?_

He feels a pair of hands frame his face, a gaze he can _feel_ fixed on his soul. He can't see Oliver, but suddenly Oliver is all he can focus on, crowding out the noise. "You are so stupid," he says, "and so brave."

Barry closes his eyes, feeling Oliver's conviction like his own, like he's the one with the lightning and Barry is just the contact zone, where sky meets earth.

 _Lightning strikes both ways,_ he thinks.

He opens his eyes and sees the lightning.


	14. Implicit Trust

There is a natural order to Oliver Queen's dating life that cannot be violated.

First names are exchanged on an as-needed basis, as in, _You know mine, I don't have to know yours._ The delicate flirtation of hands on wrist-cuffs and gliding fingers across waists is almost out of place in the loud, heady atmosphere of the club. Conversation simmers into inaudible commands, a _Come here_ writ large in open shoulders and a tug towards the door. Others might stop him, but they won't keep him for long: he's a pro at misdirection, grasping their shoulders conversationally and steering them to someone robust if they're business and Tommy if they're pleasure. (Not that Tommy ever needs the help but maybe it helps to be wanted in some abstract way, to offer services beyond _I exist._ )

He is the physical embodiment of his wealth, from the way his cologne stands out from a crowd of uninspiring scents to the tango of his feet, guided by years of experience. He isn't shy behind the curtain, doesn't hesitate to unravel, to fall apart. He might get lucky five, six times in one night, drunk by the third round and incoherent by the sixth, letting people step into his undercrowded personal space. He gets more buzzed on their hands than his own proof, relishing every second of contact, the casual, otherworldly intimacy between perfect strangers.

Then Lian Yu happens and Oliver's dating life unravels.

By his return (and Tommy's rough estimate), it has been almost two thousand days since his last fuck. Tommy caramelizes it, calls it _getting laid_ , but Oliver knows what he means and what they mean when they talk about _fish in a barrel._ He remembers lying to his mother, telling her that he was seeing someone and would tell her only _if we ever get to the exchanging-first-names stage._

First-name is reserved for Laurel, and Sara, and a handful of others who drift in and out of his life with seasonal finality. He doesn't look for perennial love. He's mercurial, preferring to tender a connection for one night – one hour, even, only there to get what he needs – and break it off as soon as he can. He'll get burned striking matches if he doesn't douse the flames almost as quickly as he creates them.

Maybe it's their indifference to him, or their simple resistance to being drawn into the shiny two-dimensional smile that wins over strangers, but one way or another John and Felicity don't burn like the others. Theirs is a deeper, quieter, more meaningful affection, a more difficult, resilient, and unpredictable love. Oliver doesn't even realize how much he needs their love until it's there. When it's reflected in Tommy and Laurel and Sara, too, it's almost too much to bear.

Then Barry shows up at the Queen Consolidated science lab, hair spiked with rain, trembling hands clutching his satchel, and Oliver doesn't know what to do with him. He's young and not just in the babyface never-been-seriously-kissedway, but in his implicit trust, all big beaming smiles. He warms up to Felicity immediately, making himself right at home in Oliver's life, wheeling in that ridiculous suitcase and looking for all the world like he snuck into a museum, giddy rebellious wonder painted across his face.

Oliver wants to push him away and drag him in farther, to see how far he could push before Barry balked.

The Barry that stands at his door now, tired and covered in bruises he didn't deserve, in scars he would never earn, is older. He sways a little, leaning against the frame for support, like he still can't quite process that he's on the ground. Oliver knows the feeling: he felt it the moment the Waverider's steel platform gave way to terra firma. He felt it, too, when Cisco opened a breach to let him and his team reach Star City in six seconds rather than hours. John has the kids under control, warding off their questions with Felicity's contributions. They don't need him.

Barry does.

Clad in one of the Waverider's replicated gray shirts and a pair of sweatpants, Barry didn't resist him on their way up to his apartment. Oliver knew they should check in with the team, but it's hard for him to care about _the team_ when Barry is leaning against his shoulder, a tangible reminder of the very real weight of Barry's presence in his own. Even struggling, Barry is still strong, keeping pace even as he aches for reprieve, recognizing what took Oliver five years to hone: _Go on. No matter how difficult that may be._

Leaving him at the threshold, Oliver did a quick perimeter check, an old habit dying hard. _Check your resting place,_ was embedded in his soul. Countless nights of not knowing if he was safe refused to die gently.

He needn't have worried; the space is secure. More so, it's alive, the world beyond the big glass windows of his apartment painted in royal blues, an emergent streak of violet forewarning a storm that rumbling thunder confirms. It should put Oliver on edge, but instead it puts him at ease, a tangible reminder of _home._ The land and lightning both, he thinks, as the first flash leaves stars across his eyes.

The Barry at the door is older, but no less responsive, watching him with bright golden eyes.

There's an assurance in his stance at odds with his slightly hunched shoulders, like he's trying to be both comfortable and unobtrusive. _Intrude,_ Oliver thinks, walking towards him. Pausing, very aware of Barry's eyes on him, he insists, _Be a part of my life._

Maybe he's hungry, or maybe the Speed Force gives him the right signal, because he crowds closer and he's been here before, half a dozen times, and it's never been what it's _supposed to be._ It's supposed to be simple. No-first-names, once-only, or not at all.

He thinks, _Give him space_ but doesn't want to.

He steps back and Barry sways forward, chasing him with a hand in his shirt, left arm still tender enough to only hang near his side, right keeping Oliver in place. _Stay._

Oliver warns himself, _Don't be selfish._

Then he cups Barry's face and kisses him.


	15. Explicit Trust

It's a fantasy, lying flat on his back with the Vigilante between his thighs.

"Don't fall asleep," Oliver murmurs against his throat, extravagantly unaware of how intoxicating his presence is. Barry's eyes stay shut, but he reaches up and threads an obedient hand in the fabric of Oliver's shirt. It makes a promise – _I'm here_ – that he cannot hope to keep. A statement reinforced when Oliver's attention returns to his mouth; Barry moans softly in response.

There's a melting quality to Oliver's kisses, experience reaping familiarity. It flicks off every switch in Barry's brain, leaving only the same sweeping need for proximity. It's easy to fall into Oliver's rhythm, to forget anything beyond the immediate give-and-take. He tugs and feels more of Oliver's weight settle on him, a careful pressure held in check by Oliver's forearms braced on the bed on either side of him. Another tug yields no concession, Oliver's omnipresence holding steady.

It's reality when he reaches up with his left hand and feels a sharp twinge of pain slice down his arm. Oliver's weight vanishes; Barry opens his eyes and stares up at him, acutely aware of his own breathing and Oliver's, too. His right hand holds onto Oliver's shirt, pulling on it again prospectively. Oliver's warmth is everywhere, in the air and on his skin, but he doesn't close the gap between them.

Barry feels Oliver's legs shift against his before Oliver disappears altogether, rolling onto his back. Barry feels the cold and lack of pressure with stunning clarity, sleep driven from his senses. He's sore enough that it punches a gasp from deep in his chest to do so, but he turns so he can press himself against Oliver's side, a shiver arching down his back. He doesn't know what he's hungrier for, the way Oliver's shoulder feels under his cheek or the arm he tucks around Barry's back, inviting him into his space.

Being at the center of Oliver's attention is overwhelming, almost too much, like he's only meant to indulge in a few seconds of it. He could drown in it, tender arm across Oliver's belly. It's a trust test, asking Oliver to be so gentle. It would be easy for Oliver to get up, to walk out, but he doesn't move, breathing slowly.

Barry almost thinks Oliver's asleep when he feels the hand around his back slide into his hair, rubbing softly. His own eyelids slip shut, but he holds onto consciousness. He's almost surprised he hasn't slipped into Speed Force accidentally, slowing the moment to stillness to snapshot it. The present is underwritten by Oliver's breathing, by the way Barry can hear his heartbeat under his own ear. It's his smell, knock-out addictive, keeping him from drifting. He wants to be Oliver's, to be part of that unique group of people who has had him this close, but he doesn't want to be the cut-and-run.

Grip loose, satisfied to his core, he disobeys Oliver's command and falls asleep to the sound of rain.

. o .

It was a dream.

A very vivid dream, to be sure — but just a dream.

(Oh it was _such_ a good—)

The pillow underneath him moves.

Barry pulls back experimentally, just a little, just enough, it seems, because the arm around his back draws him in closer.

He exhales slowly, unable to stop a smile. Pressing it against Oliver's shoulder, he dares to dream a little longer.

. o .

Breakfast is served just shy of noon, an impromptu tango of emptying cabinets and inconveniencing each other. "You went shopping," Barry notes, picking open a fresh box of Poptarts as Oliver tosses another pack of bacon on the stove. He's already gone through most of the zero-prep foods, his appetite insatiable as he hunts around and under Oliver, sifting through every cubby he can find.

He's still buzzing, wearing a set of Oliver's clothes, smelling like his shampoo. Even when he shuts the door behind him he can't escape Oliver's presence. An already-showered Oliver gets started on the first round of eggs in the kitchen, the smell irresistible by the time Barry finishes towel-drying his hair.

Oliver doesn't say it, but he doesn't need to: Barry saw the evidence for himself in the bathroom mirror. _You look better._ He feels it, too, healthier, filled with vitality and a hunger that only food can sate. Four thousand calories in and counting, he doesn't stop until he tips ten grand, leaning back against the island and almost sliding to the floor, a little buzzed. Oliver serves himself a handsome plate, setting up shop on the couch and digging in while Barry collapses with catatonic pleasure beside him.

It occurs to him that most people don't just fall into Oliver's morning routine, that most people aren't even allowed to _see_ a pre-shower Oliver (who is somehow still stupidly hot, Barry thinks, even if post-showered Oliver is fantastic). He dozes on his back, head pillowed against Oliver's thigh, the latter flipping through local channels for news and crunching down on a slice of toast.

They don't talk about it, Barry's legs hooked over the edge of the couch, his arms across his own belly. Where splintering pain erupted before is only a dull, distant ache. The mirror revealed only smooth, unbroken skin, the dark blue bruise on his leg the only indicator of its old damage, a yellowish one fading on his face. By midafternoon, he knows, it'll be like it never happened.

 _It did happen._

His memory gets fuzzy beyond the pain, only half-aware of other voices – _Ollie?_ – as his consciousness slipped. He remembered surrendering himself to the Dominators, remembered – with a shudder – the memories, the _pain_ , but he shouldn't – there shouldn't _be_ another, except there was, a third scene intruding, one where there were familiar voices he couldn't dare place except one:

 _Ollie._

But – _why._

 _I gave myself up so you wouldn't have to die,_ he thinks. Oliver could appreciate that; Oliver was all business in the field. Sometimes, there was no other option.

All he had to do was _die._

He sits up, hands sinking into his own hair as the claws which refused to kill him dig deep into his skin. Oliver puts a hand on his arm and he shivers, hunching a little farther inward because _this_ is the dream, he was supposed to – they weren't supposed to rescue him, this is a dream, it must be, it –

"Hey," Oliver says, plate abandoned. He wraps both arms around Barry, keeping him in place, and Barry knows he could break free of his grip, it wouldn't be hard. "You're okay. I'm here."

Barry shakes his head, insisting in a low tone, "Ollie, what did you – why did you –" A new thought hits him, making him feel sick. "They could've killed you." _Why didn't they kill_ me?

"You're a smart guy, Barry," Oliver acknowledges, tightening his grip, like he's afraid Barry will try to run.

 _Maybe you should_ , an insidious little voice whispers.

"But if you thought I wasn't coming after you—" Oliver shakes his head, huffing softly. "You are so stupid," he says against Barry's shoulder, "and so brave."

It's not the first time he's said it, Barry knows, but it sinks in. Oliver's brave, Barry is – reckless, impulsive, _bold._

But Oliver doesn't see it that way.

Barry drops his hands, resting them on Oliver's knees. "Why'd you—" _come back for me? Risk your life? Risk everyone's lives?_

Oliver tucks his chin over Barry's shoulder. "You'd do the same for me," he says quietly. "This is not one-sided."

It's not a statement he can listen to without seeing Oliver's face, turning in his grip. Oliver lets him go, recognizing that he's not running. Barry meets his eyes for a moment, sees something burning there that has nothing to do with lightning, everything to do with lightning, a fierce protectiveness that he knows. That he _feels_ , because Oliver's right.

 _This isn't one-sided._

And he will let nothing and no one hurt Oliver. Not if he can stop it.

Somewhere between his mind and his mouth _thank you_ becomes a kiss, a promise that aches.

 _I'm not gonna leave you._


	16. Entrust

A day that feels like the better part of a week passes.

Barry returns to Central City; Oliver stays home and takes care of the kids. Rory, Curtis, and Rene – forevermore, The Kids – fenagle him for details about the Dominators; John helpfully steps in and shuts them down. Thea shows up in time for the evening cocktail at a mayoral convention to pick up where the kids left off; without Laurel to step in as the Older Sister, Oliver is forced into assuming responsibility as the Older Brother and does his best to not explain what happened; Thea persists until he's sufficiently "distracted" by top hats and old cops to ignore her; then Quentin slips into the conversational circle and asks him what the talk of _aliens_ is all about. Oliver glances at John to petition a mercy-kill, which John mercifully disobliges. Improvising, Oliver provides enough salient details to curb the sudden curiosity of an audience larger than two; Felicity arrives in a breathtaking display of good timing and weaves a surprisingly convincing story about the falsified report of an alien invasion, citing an urban myth situated in the early nineteen-hundreds about a nonexistent radio broadcast that supposedly incited panic; spoiler alert: it did not; reality check: unlike H.G. Wells' aliens, the Dominators weren't a myth. The clock strikes ten-twenty-eight PM; Oliver has subtracted fully nine years from his life.

He sips wine from a glass-half-empty and excuses himself when his phone buzzes. It's Sara: the Waverider is ready to launch. Oliver doesn't ask her to stay, even though he wants to; Something needs her more; Something calls to her like Speed Force calls to Barry, a sense of duty superseding all alternatives. Still, her message isn't a goodbye – it's an opportunity. _I want to see you again_ , it says. Oliver doesn't ask how he'll make it happen; he knows. To Thea's chagrin and no one's surprise Oliver Queen is the first to leave his own party; he sheds his jacket at the door, reverse-weathering; out into the cold he puts a safe distance between him and the prying public eye; then he parkours to the top of an abandoned building; and waits on the rooftop for a sound unlike any other.

People say that to find The Flash, listen for The Thunder, but The Flash is supersonic, and his thunder tails him the whole way to Star City, cresting behind him and crashing in his wake; watching for stardust is secondary to sighting a comet. Like a bolt of lightning, The Flash appears suddenly, first miles away and then at the top of the roof, skidding to a halt in the gravelly turf. It takes a few seconds – eons for a speedster – for him to become approachably stable, no longer cataclysmically charged with electricity and heat. When he lifts his head and smiles, he's safe to touch.

His tone is warbled, his face masked, but it's Barry who speaks for that great Other: "Hey, stranger. How was your day?"

It's so innocuous that it takes Oliver aback. He can't form a response, stricken by the fact that underneath that impenetrable red armor are scars that never formed. How many times does The Flash bounce back, seemingly unscathed, from any challenge he faces? Oliver wonders if his own canvassed skin is only distinct from Barry's unbroken surface in the metaphorical sense; reality carves and burns and bleeds its way into Barry's bones just as surely, just not as permanently.

"In case it wasn't clear, I'm here to give you a lift," Barry elaborates, gesturing around himself with lackadaisical dismissal. "Unless you'd rather walk, which would be kind of self-defeating, or ride your bike, which would take you … eight hours, give or take." Looking skyward, he contemplates the stars and amends, "Maybe seven on a nice clear night like this." With a wolfish smile, he adds, "No speed limits in the desert."

Oliver takes a step forward. Barry says, "If I get dust on your shirt, I'm sorry."

Another step. Oliver says nothing. Barry looks him up and down, worried curiosity in his eyes. "You okay? You're being really quiet."

Oliver closes the gap and wraps his arms around Barry's waist, ducking his chin to rest his forehead against Barry's shoulder, exhaling. Barry's own arms come around him, lean and warm and full of light, and it occurs to Oliver that he could not distinguish between injured and uninjured if he tried, that mechanically they're identical. He wants to unzip the suit and find the damage he knows isn't there, to find proof of the impossible, healed wounds where scars should be.

He rests his hands flat against Barry's back and feels him sigh, a low-key, barely perceptible shiver under his skin. Sliding one hand up to cup the back of his neck, Oliver holds him close. _I can't miss you this much,_ he thinks.

 _I can't need you this much._

The gesture is confirmation and release, removing the barrier of necessary robustness and leaving behind raw strength.

 _I survived. That's all the universe can ask of me._

Oliver doesn't know who says it or where it comes from, but he does oblige when Barry suggests, "Close your eyes and hold on."

Hold on _where_ quickly becomes apparent as, without effort, it seems, Barry lifts him, bridal-style, and in another universe, he would squawk and fuss and refuse, but in this one he simply puts his arms around Barry's neck in a firm lasso. He feels Barry take a deep breath and then they're off.

It's more like flying than running. Without any visual input, he can only feel the immediacy of Barry's warmth along every point of contact, like a fireplace but gentler, somehow, as if the admonitions to never touch the flame had at last retreated, allowing him to wonderingly trace his hands through it. Mick's obsession with fire seems almost clear in this light; it's beautiful, intoxicatingly bright, ethereal but utterly earthly, all-encompassing without forcing itself on him, like drifting through a sea of stars he is permitted to touch.

With childlike irreverence, he lets go of Barry's neck. His arms are still loosely locked but no longer connected, allowing the intermedium to skate through his fingers. Where Barry's heat was before, his hands float, buoyed by an indefinable water which is not cold and does not drown him.

He loses track of time, alternately attempting to define _Speed_ at its purest and simply reveling in the secondary affect, its favored conduit providing a constant feedback loop of _I've got you_ that keeps any fear of falling at bay. They decelerate and Oliver makes the mistake of opening his eyes, stomach-churning vertigo sweeping over him as he shuts them just as quickly. He holds onto Barry's neck tightly for the last leg of the journey, exhaling hard when he finally has both feet underneath him, eyes squeezed shut.

Blowing out a breath, he dares to open his eyes, looking around the familiar grassy field outside the former airplane hangar. "Wow," he says, an involuntary hush.

"Welcome to Central City," Barry introduces, unmasking and grinning at Oliver. "It's just shy of eleven PM." There's a proud puff to his voice; quick math reveals a staggering twelve-hundred-mile-per-hour mean.

No wonder he's dizzy.

"You're lucky John's not here," Oliver grunts, "or he'd have thrown up on you by now."

Barry scrunches up his nose and then _whoomph,_ disappears in a flurry of blue, on his back and laughing breathlessly a moment later. "Oh, god, you're strong," he wheezes, amusement overtaking any discomfort as Kara helps him back up. "Hi," he adds, hugging her tight, "hi, I missed you."

Kara hugs him back gently. "Sorry; Winn was going to call ' _the_ _interstellar armada_ ' if I didn't check in within seventy-two hours. I don't know who he would have contacted, but if there's one Vibe, there's probably another, and I didn't want to start World War Z between them."

"I wanna go back to your Earth," Barry says, with such open, earnest conviction that Oliver's heart hurts.

 _You can't leave._

"You're welcome anytime," Kara assures, shifting to hold him at arm's length. "Winn said he'd let you sleep at his place. Of course, Alex and I could make room, too, and James is usually okay with house guests."

There's a glee on Barry's face that won't be suppressed even as Sara clears her throat and asks, "Running away already?"

The grass is midnight blues and unlike her superhero compadres, Sara has no external glow, but she stands with lion-like carriage, leading a motley crew of six: Jax, Stein, Mick, Amaya, Nate, and Ray. Oliver prides himself on his ability to disappear into any dark setting, but he can't help but admire the sheer stealth of her approach, despite the chalky white of her suit. Her feet don't make a sound, but Nate and Ray together make sufficient noise to announce, like fumbling cubs, their elder's presence.

"I thought that's what you were doing," Oliver challenges, stepping forward to meet her. She smiles a little, half-rueful, half-anticipatory. "It'll be quiet not having Team Legends around," he adds, looking at the assembly.

"If you think you've seen the last of us, you've got another thing coming," Mick grunts, fishing a chocolate bar out of his pocket and taking a bite. He spits it out. "Who the _fuck_ put fruit in my lunch?"

"It's healthy," Ray protests, taking an involuntary step back at the look Mick gives him, chucking the bar at his head.

"I miss you, already," Oliver says with earnest insincerity, eliciting a well-earned shoulder-punch.

A red blur swoops in and then Sara's gone, reappearing seconds later at the far end of the runway. Mick, Ray, and Nate scarcely notice, as Nate unhelpfully steps in to defend Ray's honor. When it comes to actual blows, Amaya steps in, glowing purple, grabbing them by the backs of their collars and tossing them ten feet apart. "Nice throw," Jax says. "It's been nice meeting you," he adds, stepping forward to shake Oliver's hand.

"We'd stay longer, but it's difficult to gauge the extent of time aberrations _within_ the temporal zone, nigh impossible on the ground," Stein adds helpfully, mimicking Jax's courtesy.

"Wow, she can really throw," Nate puffs, sitting up and looking at Amaya with undisguised awe.

Oliver has zero idea what transpires between Sara and Barry at the edge of the airfield, but by the time he's finished shaking hands with everyone – even Mick, who growled, "This doesn't make us friends or anything" – he comes face-to-face with Kara.

For a moment, he can't speak, struggling to find words to encapsulate his gratitude and relief for her help. Then Barry flashes back and asks, "Did I miss it?"

"Miss what?" Oliver asks.

Kara shakes her head and Barry grins, elaborating, "Group hug."

"Group—" Oliver trails off, sighing when they step forward, one on either side of him, sunshine twins.

"I'm gonna throw up," Mick deadpans.

Oliver ignores it, a protectiveness so strong it hurts hitting him. They have powers, but he feels equally powerful in their presence, uplifted, his own skillset something neither of them possess and both quietly respect. It's thank-you – it's _teach-me_.

When they back off, he can feel their lightning on him, Kara's concentrated in a soft stardusty way, Barry's irreverently static on his skin. He zaps a yelp out of Sara when he steps forward and takes her hand, apologetically letting go. He relaxes when she hugs him instead. "I don't envy you if that's what your mornings are like," she says in a hush only he can hear.

His ears burn, his curiosity piqued and defensiveness roused, but neither breaks through the surface when she lets go and steps away.

Barry hugs her without hesitation, avoiding another shock, and Oliver wonders if it isn't intentional, or maybe involuntary, when the lightning bleeds over and carries a charge elsewhere. He's curious but not curious enough to ask, let alone in front of the group. Even Kara sneaks in a hug, and there's a renewed certainty in Sara's eyes when she finally backs off.

"Don't do anything I wouldn't do," she advises. "One of us," a gesture at the band, "will be at the waypoint every six weeks, if you need to reach us."

"Good luck," Oliver offers.

"Godspeed," Barry adds.

The Waverider coalesces perhaps fifty yards off, Jax and Stein leading the group inside. Barry sidles over and leans a shoulder against Oliver's, the contact so slight it's almost forgettable, _almost_ the operative word as Team Legends boards. It only takes three minutes for the Waverider to take off into the great unknown, vanishing into _stella incognita_.

The silence is consuming but not uncomfortable, lingering for a moment longer before Oliver dusts off the conversation. "Where's Cisco and Caitlin?"

"They wanted a quiet night in," Barry explains. "Said their goodbyes this afternoon." He's still watching the stars, hopelessly enchanted, only half-listening. A cool breeze rouses him, his shoulder pressing against Oliver's a little harder before he realizes what he's doing and leans away.

"Speaking of quiet nights in—" Kara steps forward and snags one last hug from Barry. "Be safe."

"You, too," he tells her.

"Godspeed," Oliver replies.

They both grin and then they're off, disappearing in a blur of red and blue, a solitary flame rejoining him as the blue dot vanishes at a point near the horizon. Barry skis to a halt, kicking up dust, and puffs, "You hungry?"

"I could use a drink," Oliver replies, missing his bow but following his chipper compass as it leads him across the grass.

He's more vulnerable without his own armor, but with Barry as his shield, he only has room for reciprocity.


	17. Confidant

The more Oliver drinks, the more he talks.

Barry could listen to him forever and it wouldn't grow old. Oliver has so many stories—about his childhood, his family's business, his playboy escapades, his misadventures with a man named Tommy, his return to Star City and his crusade against its elite criminals (all above the table, he adds, tongue-in-cheek).

He talks about Thea racing around the mansion, his dad's nickname – Speedy! – catching on and sticking. He talks about Laurel and how he was immediately enamored with this gorgeous, no-nonsense lawyer at a time where people were forgotten notes cast to sea, come-and-go. He talks about Tommy, too, his _best friend in life,_ a boy he knew from childhood who grew into a man who Oliver was enormously proud of.

In a fond tone, he talks about his mother, how his relationship with her was surprisingly robust: he could always count on Mom to cover for him because she and Dad let him get away with murder (not literally; _not yet_ ). He doesn't look at Barry at all when he talks about his father, a man who stole from the city's poorest to maximize Queen Consolidated's profit margins, who used to put a Christmas tree in every room when the holidays came along, who hugged him one last time before he shot himself in the head. He doesn't talk about Lian Yu.

He orders a second bottle and talks about Diggle, how they met, how Dig knew from the start that Oliver was a greater threat to himself than he realized, how he needed a mentor and friend and Dig was always it. He talks about ditching his replacement bodyguard Rob and driving the poor guy to an early resignation, inciting tensions with Thea's on-and-off boyfriends with his patented _If-you-hurt-her-I'll-snap-your-neck_ look, creating trouble with Sara on the _Queen's Gambit_ mere hours before it sank with all other hands. He talks about Quentin Lance's resentment of him, his quasi-friendship, a growing mutual respect. He talks about Roy Harper, too, and how he put an arrow through his leg.

He spends a quarter-hour on Felicity Smoak, the intern who happened to be at the IT desk when he arrived with a bullet-riddled laptop, who took his lies at face value and joined his team (albeit, reluctantly at first), who changed his life for the better and dubbed _Original Team Arrow._ He talks about women named Helena and McKenna, men like Malcolm Merlyn and Sebastian Blood, monsters like Slade Wilson. He even talks about the League of Assassins, hashing out only nicknames, identifying himself as _Al Sah-him_ in an unraveling tapestry of intrigue.

When he reaches the bottom of the second bottle, he shakes his sleeve back to check his watch and orders a water and keeps going.

He talks about his first days back in Star City, how: "everyone asked what I missed most. I didn't miss things; I missed people. I missed Thea and Laurel and Tommy, Mom and Dad. I missed celebrating Christmas and eating breakfast with them. I missed being something other than chronically lonely."

He talks about the panic attacks and sleepless nights bluntly. "There was too much to process, too many things to catch up on. It was painful, adjusting to life with walls." The media attention earns its two cents, too: "Honestly? Fuck paparazzi." (Barry clinks his glass with a hear-hear smile, exempting the one and only journalist he trusts with Flash's story.) He talks about his club, how: "Verdant was the best thing to happen to my relationship with Thea. Seeing her in a managerial role was … healing. She'd been through a lot; she needed a change."

He growls when he talks about Isabel Rochev, the woman who seized his company, and spares a grimace for Ray Palmer when he talks about the buyout. "Fuck money, too," he says, waving the bartender over for another water so he can continue, sleepiness slurring his words.

His vague Russian accent and workable Mandarin slip into his speech, sneaking in and out of explanations, accompanied by little waves and nods that Barry can mirror. He talks about the Bratva, about Alexi Leonov, and Barry asks who he is and Oliver says _was_ before closing the casket on Leonov. He toasts Anatoly Knyazev and Amanda Waller. He husks the word _Shadow_ and Barry wants to ask; he orders a beer to toast a man named Yao Fe.

He paints an abstraction of the first nine months back in Star City. It was _Starling_ at the time, and Barry remembers reading the name on the train station sign, a time marker of _Before_ if there ever was one. (He didn't have much time for reflection; the tranquilizer dart sank home and yanked him under shortly thereafter.) There are countless stories that Barry already knows, virtually by heart, but he listens aptly to Oliver's perspective, feasting on it.

They're in a public space and no matter how low Oliver sinks in his seat, he never unmasks himself, always referring to the vigilante as a separate person and underscoring the SCPD's role in the takedowns. He stands as a prescient witness in the prose, explaining motives and providing the keystone clues, but he never gives himself credit.

Barry does. And he can't help the awe that swells in his chest, the sheer gratitude for this man and his role in helping Starling City.

Then Oliver mentions the body count and there is something devastatingly hollow in his voice that says he falls asleep with that idea locked in his head. It aches in his voice, the apology and justified rage, _I had to_ warring with _I'm sorry._ He won't look at Barry even though Barry snakes his arm around Oliver's waist and lets it rest there.

He rubs his thumb over Oliver's hip and tries to say without words that he isn't innocent, either, that their line of work requires a certain surrender of principles. He loved the Vigilante, loved what he stood for, what he fought for, what he dared to do, even if he knew that it was a dangerous line and no person was truly qualified to walk it. If there was anyone who came close, it was Oliver Queen.

They don't talk after that, sitting at the bar together until Oliver gets up and leaves Barry alone. When he returns, he seems more tired if anything, crowding forward and nuzzling Barry's shoulder. The blanket of his weight is a burden Barry gladly bears. _Let's go home_ , he suggests, raking his hands down Oliver's back before standing. It's rarely evident, but when Oliver presses closer Barry notices that he's a little taller, just enough to make his heart ache, and when Oliver nods against his chest it makes him want to hold on forever.

They walk outside and Barry apologizes – Oliver doesn't care, just closes his eyes, like he knows it's coming – and Flashes them back to his apartment. Oliver stumbles into his bathroom and vomits, not even trying to fight it. Barry tracks down a spare blanket from the closet and drapes it over Oliver's shoulders. A hand nudges his side, eloquently requesting space; Barry grants it, leaving him alone.

He gets comfortable on the bed, cross-eyed with fatigue – what a goddamn _day_ – but still coherent enough to pull back the covers. A countless time punctuated only by a decreasing awareness of it passes, the running sink interrupting the mindless haze of Barry's thoughts. The bathroom door opens and then the lights turn off, leaving the room in darkness, his own breathing slow and heavy and hitching only a little when Oliver settles into the space beside him.

Oliver mumbles against his shirt, "I wanted life to be normal. After Lian Yu. I didn't want scars, to – think about the island. I wanted to wake up and see my mom, Dad, Thea, Tommy, Laurel—" he pushes Barry until he's almost at the edge of the bed and Barry snags the headboard to keep himself from falling, halting Oliver's progress. Efforts halted, Oliver curls up next to him, small-as-possible, and it hurts Barry in a way no arrow ever could. "I wanted a lot. I wanted – I didn't want five more years. I didn't want the time back. I wanted to erase those five years, to never have been … twenty-two or twenty-seven years old. But I was. And at the time – I'd have given anything to be twenty-one again, or nineteen, or seven – as far from the island as I could get.

"I wanted life t'be normal," he insists. "I didn't want an 'After.' I didn't want to be damaged. I wanted to be Oliver Queen again. But then I met Dig. And Felic—Felicity. And I saw – who Thea and Tommy and Laurel became, who Sara, who – my mother – I saw them change. My – expectations did, too. I didn't– didn' know you, 'Before,' and I would've said … my life was good enough, 'Before.' Something to strive for.

"But without you," he curls a hand in Barry's shirt and says, "it wouldn't be full."

Barry rubs his hand across Oliver's back slowly, aware that he would've said the same thing, three years ago, when being _The Flash_ was still so new that it was equal parts exhilarating and terrifying. After being in a coma for nine months, normalcy seemed like the best option. _It never happened_ , the blank slate of his mind insists, Oliver's wish-granted scenario. But he didn't feel satisfied; for a long time, he felt empty, wanting for the missing time, craving the growth that should have happened in those nine months. When he met Oliver again on the rooftop, it was a glimpse of Before – but as a becoming, an _After_ he could live with.

"To life not being normal," Oliver tapers, hand losing its grip.

Barry's keeps its own. "To life being full," he replies, resting his eyes.

He doesn't know who lets his guard down first, but he's grateful the need to keep it vanishes.


	18. Confident

"Let me get this straight—"

"I'd rather you didn't," the forty-year-old Barry replies, shaking sugar into his coffee, his younger counterpart at the CCPD. "I don't know how many paradoxes I'm causing as it is. Thank God I never grew out of the baby-face," he adds with a nod to the nonplussed Jitters clientele.

Watching him work, Oliver corrects automatically, "My Barry's right-handed."

The older Barry looks up without lifting his head and slides the coffee to his right hand. "I'm ambidextrous," he explains, digging a pen out of his pocket and signing his name on a napkin with each hand in his usual illegible scrawl. "I forgot – after the accident, I had to –" He clears his throat. "Never mind. I made a mistake."

Oliver sighs. "What kind of mistake?" he asks, reaching up to pinch his brow.

Barry grimaces and moves a hand to one side, lifting his shirt so Oliver can see the claw-marked skin, deep, unsurvivable wounds caked over with black blood. "This kind."

Barry picks up his coffee and takes a long, satisfied sip like it's the last he'll ever get. It very likely is, Oliver reflects, straining to stand. Anchored to his chair, he can't move, can't help. He aches for another means, but the patrons around them maintain their positions, refusing to act unless he calls out for them. He begs for someone, anyone, to act anyway, for Dig to kick in the door, for Felicity to tell him over the comms that she's on it.

No one acts. They just drink their coffee and finish their crossword puzzles, utterly oblivious.

Barry levels a _don't bother them_ look at him and extends a hand across the table. Oliver latches onto it; it's already cold. "There's no easy way to put it," Barry offers as an apology, rubbing his thumb over Oliver's knuckles. "I just – I really wanted to see you again. I know that's selfish and it could shatter the time continuum, but—"

"Barry," Oliver says, reaching up to cup his face, heart hurting, "it's okay."

 _Why couldn't you have been more selfish?_ he begs. _Why couldn't you have stayed home that night?_ he demands, ready to tear the table in half if it means he can get closer. He needs to help, to do something other than watch as Barry's breath hitches, chest heaving for breath.

"I should – I should go," Barry manages, fading fast. He stands and Oliver holds onto his sleeve.

"Don't," he pleads. "Barry, don't –"

 _Die alone._

The fight sinks from Barry's shoulders and Oliver stands, wrapping his arms around Barry. For a moment, he thinks, _I can save you_. For one incurably optimistic minute he believes he can get Barry the help he needs and spare him.

But Oliver kneels to balance the weight, and Barry's gone before his knees hit the floor.

. o .

Oliver jerks awake, startling the speedster at his side into action.

Before the dust of consciousness settles, Barry is back, wild-haired and wearing nothing more than his boxers. "What happened?" he asks, voice fully an octave deeper than normal, blinking owlishly.

It slips out before Oliver can stop it: "How old are you?"

"I – twenty-eight, this month," Barry says, brow furrowed, sleep-heavy and startled at once. "Is there a problem?"

"Are you ambidextrous?" Oliver demands, sliding off the bed – Barry already tossed all the covers when he bolted. He doesn't like having this conversation sitting down, reminded too much of the Older Barry in the younger Barry's posture.

"Should I be?" Barry replies, _oofing_ softly when Oliver hugs him hard enough to crack ribs. "Good morning to you, too," he says, nuzzling – _nuzzling_ – Oliver's shoulder, and Oliver's kind of hot in a shirt (and Barry's kind of hot without one, not that Oliver's pride would ever admit it) but he can't be bothered with it because there's a living-breathing Barry right here.

"You're gonna drive me to an early grave," Oliver growls, holding on, insisting on replacing the memory of Barry's dead weight with his living warmth.

Barry tilts his head slightly and kisses Oliver's neck with lazy attitude, _fuck yeah I am_ pressed to his shoulder in a drawling forgotten murmur. "You're an angry hungover kind of guy, aren't you?" he muses out loud. Oliver pinches his side and Barry yelps, withdrawing. He doesn't get far, Oliver pushing him up against a wall – and yeah, Barry's looking more awake now, _about time_ – and staring at him.

"Did I do something wrong?" Barry asks, raking his hands down Oliver's arms. "You seem kind of – wired."

"You would tell me. If you were about to do something stupid."

Barry frowns. "Am I about to do something stupid?" he asks, stupidly.

"Barry."

"Sure, yeah. If it helps you sleep at night. I will tell you before I do something stupid."

Oliver steels himself, the memory of deep, dangerous claw marks in Barry's side vivid in his mind. "Like surrendering yourself to aliens?"

Every muscle under Oliver's hands tenses, the easy almost-playfulness in Barry's stance evaporating. "There wasn't a better option," he insists quietly, averting his gaze.

 _Not good enough._ "Barry, there are always better options than _surrendering yourself to the enemy_ without a plan."

"There wasn't enough time," Barry deflects. He gives Oliver a little experimental nudge back. "C'mon, Ollie, let's not –"

It's distracting, his nonchalance. Oliver can't believe that Barry is alive; the dream version was so _real._ Oliver has a sick moment of wonder – _was that another world?_ – before a particularly venomous throb in his head reminds him that alcohol has produced far weirder dreams. He grunts, neither affirmative nor negating, and says, "Sorry."

Barry blinks, looking tempted to ask – _for what?_ – before accepting it at face value. "Tell you what," Barry says, clearer than before but still sleep-heavy and -husky, "let me shower and I'll get you something for the hangover."

Before Oliver can say, _Stay,_ Barry's gone, a kiss fading on his cheek as the shower runs (it's more like a bath, Barry will explain later, as he lets the water run for a few seconds to warm up before he steps into the curtain of frozen rain). He's back in less time than it takes Oliver to draw three deep breaths, all minty-fresh toothpaste and freshly-showered softness.

He puts his hands around Oliver's waist and says, "Good morning."

Oliver presses his forehead to Barry's shoulder. "Hi."

"Shower's free," Barry explains, sliding his hands down Oliver's back. "Water's still hot. I'll be right back." And he's gone again.

It's all a little impossible to wrap his mind around, Oliver decides, hobbling to the bathroom, headache more pronounced by the second. The heat of the shower helps tame something wild in his head, a brambling, restless pain untangling. He lets his shoulders sink back, his breathing settle, and steps out maybe five minutes, maybe thirty later, using one of Barry's towels and freshening up with a spare unopened toothbrush. _Thanks, boy scout,_ he thinks, feeling better, brighter when he steps back into the bedroom.

Barry didn't make the bed, but he put the covers back on it. He's finishing up a plate of pancakes and looks up when Oliver steps into the room. "Oh, hey," he says, fishing out a bottle of aspirin from his pocket and shaking out a couple pills. "Here."

Oliver steals Barry's glass of water to swallow them down. "Thanks," he says, reaching up to press his hand against his forehead with a wince. "Whiskey does not agree with me like it used to."

"I don't think whiskey agrees with anyone like it used to," Barry corrects, whining a little when Oliver draws him away from his plate. It's a quiet, under his breath noise that Oliver isn't even sure Barry intended to make, but it brings _trust me_ to the surface when he kisses him. Barry relaxes, returning the favor readily. "Kissing agrees with you," he mumbles, and Oliver pinches his side again because he's in love with a fucking _dork_.

A dork who isn't allowed to get himself killed.

It doesn't escape his notice that Barry needed time to find aspirin – he didn't have it on hand, had no more need for it on hand, _it doesn't do anything for me_ , a tale of alcohol and painkillers and a quiet life – but he doesn't press the point.

Kissing Barry senseless is a far more appealing option.

. o .

They both have a reputation for being late, which helps hold down their day jobs.

Of course, if Joe West didn't cover for Barry he probably wouldn't be a CSI anymore, and Oliver certainly couldn't be mayor of Star City if it wasn't for Thea's tactful management. As it stands, Dig and Felicity give him a joint call – _Hey, Oliver; you're on speaker_ – around four, asking if he had any intention of returning to his home city.

 _This is my home city_ , Oliver thinks, hanging out at the park and basking in Central City air.

 _How do you plan to keep this up?_ Felicity presses.

It's a real question he doesn't have an answer for, knowing that anything he provided would only lead to more questions. It's easier to deflect, distract, disappoint, to let it be a problem eventually, Future Tense.

He tells them he's staying in Central for a day or two – _I need to clear my head_ – and they relent. _Just be careful_ , Felicity advises.

 _Stay in touch,_ Dig adds.

Oliver doesn't know what he means – _I do_ – but when night falls, he starts to understand it.

If chasing the Vigilante was half as fun for Barry as waiting on the rooftop for The Flash, Oliver can see where Barry's obsession stemmed from. "The Starling City Vigilante," Barry says, all golden light and deep shadows, a smile visible underneath the mask. "Where's yours?" he adds, tapping the mask.

Oliver replies, "You're fast enough you almost don't need one."

Barry lifts the cowl, his eyes glowing faintly gold. "A wise man once said I should wear one," he says sagely, stepping forward, a mischievous smile in place. "Hungry for adventure?"

"Curious," Oliver replies. "Don't mind me."

Barry crowds his space and Oliver is very aware of the lightning, that Other presence in Barry's skin, a certainty, a maturity daytime, de-masked Barry lacks. Like he's more stardust than most people, intangible and yet instinctively familiar. "You know, I would have done anything to meet you. Back then," Barry elaborates. "I used to dream about it." He shakes his head with a smile. "You'd never say anything to me. Too clever for that, I guess." He reaches out curiously and Oliver stands still, letting him rest a hand on Oliver's shoulder. "I asked you a lot of stupid questions. _Why green?_ was pretty high up there."

Oliver watches him, his own eyes acquiring the faintest silver underlining in the city lights, not making a move as Barry circles. " _Why put yourself at risk? Why help strangers who hated you?_ " He stops behind Oliver, asking the dark, " _Why be a hero?_ " He huffs a little laugh. "I should've seen the last one coming. It's addictive. Like …" he circles back so he can face Oliver, saying simply, "freedom. To be the person I'm supposed to be. It's more than most people get and more than I deserve, but—"

"Barry, if there was anyone who deserved to be a hero, it's you," Oliver corrects simply.

"Ah, see, that's why you never spoke," Barry muses. "You'd have given me the push I needed. To not wait for the lightning."

 _You're in more danger than ever because of the lightning,_ Oliver thinks, _and safer for it._

The lightning is so integral to Barry that Oliver can almost see it, smoothing his duck-waddle stride, pushing back the shy shoulders, giving him an air of confidence that's almost addictive, it's so compelling.

"Do you need a push?" Oliver asks, arching an eyebrow.

Barry pulls the cowl over his head. "No," he says with a smile, "I've got everything I need. And a city who needs me," he adds with an almost apologetic air. "Or, you know—" He gestures eloquently at himself, at Flash as the icon, as the inhuman, the unbreakable. "They need—"

"A guardian angel," Oliver finishes.

Reds don't show up in dim light, but Oliver can see the blush darken Barry's face, disappearing in shadow when he turns it.

"Go," Oliver instructs. "This is your city."

"Could be yours," Barry proposes without looking back, taking off.

An old Barry once seemed like an oxymoron to Oliver; the Central City Vigilante is equally out-of-place in his mind.

But there's something there, a demand that must be met.

 _Choose_.

He watches Flash disappear down the streets.

 _That's why you never spoke. You'd have given me the push I needed._

Oliver stays, guarding the no man's land, a silent refusal to concede.

 _Yet._


	19. Trusting Too Much

If he runs fast enough, Barry can clone himself.

Technically, he can create a version of himself that is one ten-billionth of a second younger. Same principle: the younger version runs as fast as he does, shares his values – loves Oliver just as deeply. He can be in two places at once. He can live in Central and Star City, attending his joint obligations. _Protect your teams._ The wildest part? Neither of his families would have to know. If he was careful, and he is clever, he could do it.

But it's absurd, and immoral, and Cait and Cisco could both give him a thirty-minute lecture on why it wouldn't work. Doesn't change the want. Doesn't change the _need_.

Decompressing on his all-too-empty couch with a bottle of aspirin in hand, Barry aches. He wants it, wants to be able to wake up every morning with Oliver beside him. He wants to be able to high-five Dig and hug Felicity after a job well done, to assist with their Big Bads so maybe Oliver will live a little longer. Extending Oliver's life one day _more_ would be worth the rest of his.

He was willing to die for Oliver, willing to give himself up to aliens who haunt his sleep and haunt his waking moments and haunt his very steps, digging claws into his skin like nails. They won't come out. Caitlin tells him that he's fully healed, but he doesn't feel fully healed.

He wanted to keep his family _safe_. They deserved to be safe.

( _Don't you?_ )

He shakes out an aspirin and stares at the little white pill contemplatively, feeling a strange heartache in his chest. For Oliver, for the rest of the world, these work. They cure something. They make it _better_.

 _If they get to cut shortcuts, why can't I?_

It's only been two weeks, but he misses Oliver so much his stomach hurts. His focus won't stay on the job: his mind drifts to Star City at every opportunity. _I could be there with you_ , he thinks, itching to leave a clone behind and _run_. The clone could get used to life with Caitlin and Cisco, could fill the void he'd leave in Joe and Iris' lives.

He hated empty spaces.

When he went away for college, he was nervous, excited. Joe dropped him off, Barry hugged him tight, and they didn't see each other again for almost three months. It was the longest they'd been apart since Barry first walked into their lives, huddled and hurting, seven years prior. Barry missed him and Iris intensely, called incessantly, to the point where Joe set aside a specific time for it rather than attempt to accommodate spontaneous intrusions throughout the day.

He _needed_ and wanted and craved human company, and his roommate was a cool guy, laidback, friendly enough, easy to like. He didn't actively have a crush on Jeremy, but college was the first time he realized he wasn't straight. It didn't hurt that the Becky Cooper days still stung in the back of his mind. (Iris was so, so right and he was so, so stupid. He wasted the better part of a year trying to impress Becky and be someone she'd actually like. He spent so many hours ruminating about a relationship he couldn't possibly fix.)

Bars were nice places to find affection. It was easy to initiate casual touches with perfect strangers when everyone was a little buzzed. There was less pressure; there were fewer critical eyes, too. He liked what he got, liked warming up in other people's company. Gender stopped mattering after the first night, alternating depending on the night and the bar and his own mood.

He wants to go out, but he can't even get _buzzed_ anymore, not without asking Caitlin for some of that super-proof alcohol, a conversation which entails talking to Caitlin and indubitably will end with her psychoanalyzing him. He loves her, really, he does; but some nights he just wants to do things without asking questions. Even Cisco can pry, and given their only on-off amity, he doesn't want to push his luck. With the old Cisco, the pre-Flashpoint Cisco, he might've. With this post-Flashpoint Cisco, he's just trying not to shatter the house of cards.

He doesn't know Wally well enough to risk pouring his soul out in front of him, and Jesse is similarly a stranger to him. Harry's not here and HR is the last person on the planet he'd lay his soul bare before.

It takes him almost an hour to work up sufficient misery to call Iris.

She's there in fifteen minutes, dropping her coat on the floor like they always do and sauntering over to him. He holds out his arms and she takes the aspirin away and hugs him. Resting her chin on top of his head, she holds him there, and he doesn't know where the tears come from, except that two weeks of living without Oliver makes his shattered teacup tremble in his hands.

Fisting the back of her shirt, he holds on and sobs.

She says his name, his nickname, over and over, and he wishes he could close his eyes and undo it all, reset the multiverse, go back to day _one_ where everything was easier. Where he wasn't the fucking Flash and he didn't have to make this choice at all, where he could just love and love easy without having to think _if I leave people will die._ If he stays _he_ might.

It's exhaustion and pain and teeth-aching misery, and he doesn't know how they end up in his room but they're on top of the sheets together and his heart stops feeling like it's being actively shredded after a time. She rubs his arm and he rests a hand on her waist and asks quietly, "What am I supposed to do?"

She considers it, hand settling on his wrist. "You're supposed to love who you love, Barry," she says. "That's all you can do."

"I can't love him." It hurts to say out loud.

"Why not?"

Barry's throat tightens. "Because I can't." _I can't be with him, I can't keep up with him, I can't put him in danger, I can't risk losing him, I can't feel this intensely about any one person because I'm destined to lose everything and I can't-lose-him-I-can't-lose-him._

Iris shuffles closer and he hugs her, grateful for the tactile distraction, for the immediacy of her presence. "I love you," he tells her, idle and sincere. And it does not set his soul on fire.

"I love you, too," she replies, and he knows it's true and relaxes, because of all the things that have happened, that hasn't changed.

She loves him like Sara loves him, told him as much when he pulled her aside at the airfield before the Waverider departed. He told her in a burst almost too fast to hear, "I-kissed-Oliver-and-I-know-you-two-were-a-thing-so-I-don't-want-this-to-be-awkward-but-I'm-kind-of-freaking-out-about-it-and-"

"I'm happy for you," Sara said, cutting him off, gentle but firm. "Be careful with him. He will … set you on fire and make you fall in love with it."

He'd laughed a little then because he didn't realize exactly how much she meant it.

But she was right, and he was in too deep to deny that he would go down in flames just to be with Oliver Queen.

Who _wouldn't?_ Even Iris, steady, wonderful Iris put Oliver on her three list when she was dating Eddie. Oliver was the kind of person who looked at you and suddenly you realized that _this_ was what it felt like to be looked at, to be regarded with someone's full attention, for the first time in your life.

It was arresting, mesmerizing, some cosmic force between gravity and annihilation. He couldn't get those blue eyes out of his mind. He couldn't get the way Oliver said his _name_ out of his head, and even holding onto Iris, he misses Oliver's hugs, the way he fills a space and makes it feel safe and warm and whole.

Delirious with pain, literally blind with panic, Barry shied away from his friends – until Oliver told him that he was _okay_. And then he settled. Because that was what you did when Oliver Queen spoke.

You listened.

"You gonna be okay?" Iris asks, and Barry nods against her hair because he isn't, but he will be.

She stays another hour before giving him the room once more, and he doesn't stay long, just looks around his lonely empty little space and deems it intolerable.

Star City is only an hour away.

Halfway there, it starts to rain.

. o .

He all but slips in the Arrow cave, which is – empty. Dark, even. _That's weird_. He turns in a slow circle, like he half-expects the team to jump out from behind tables and shout, "Surprise!" No such welcome forth-comes. Within the space he can feel the pain, a residual grieving that is deep and lingers heavy.

Flashing to Oliver's apartment, he finds the Star City vigilante standing on the balcony, staring out at the night and letting the rain soak into him.

"Ollie," he says, but Oliver doesn't turn. "Oliver?" He steps closer, gingerly, and it hits him like a wall, the grieving, and he falls back a step. "What happened?" Fear threatens to strangle him. _Is Felicity okay?_ _Is Dig?_

"I – " Oliver swallows hard. It looks like it physically hurts him. "I – I killed –"

And Barry says, " _Ollie_ " and suddenly he is more grateful for the Speed Force than he has ever been in his life, because he can step forward and hug him so tight he almost breaks both of them.

. o .

"You're fucking soaked," Oliver tells him, a lifetime later, in a hard voice, because when Oliver grieves he gets angry or he will shatter, and Barry accepts the t-shirt Oliver passes him and watches Oliver prowl around, looking for a way to dissuade his pain.

"Let me help," Barry encourages, shrugging into the shirt obediently, stealing a pair of Oliver's pants for good measure. Oliver's clothes are a bit coarser than his own – Speed has a strangely softening quality on clothing – but he likes it. Like a hard bed, sometimes tough is good. "Ollie." He waits until Oliver looks at him, reaches out and repeats, "Let me help."

Oliver doesn't deserve to cry, and his eyes are red with trying not to, but he nods once stiffly and doesn't even curse when Barry picks him up and Flashes them off.

. o .

Barry thinks, _We're poisoning the memories_ , but it doesn't stop him from setting Oliver down at the warehouse they fought at, maybe ten years ago, but no, it was only a year, and _how are there lives this complicated?_ They don't have a bow or arrow or either of their suits, but he says, "You won't hurt me," and means it.

He's better than a punching bag because punching bags just shake, feeble and inanimate, when you sink a fist into them, but Barry catches Oliver's fist and throws them back, gentle but with enough force to mean business. He tosses a few of his own at normal speed, and they're falling into the easy rhythm they knew Before their lives became even more entangled. Oliver catches his hands and holds them. He lets Barry know in those instances that he could take him down and Barry says, _I would let you_ when he stands still and does not run.

Within an hour, Oliver's throwing fast punches, as hard as he can, and it's still slow to Barry but it changes their rhythm. He keeps up, effortlessly, mindlessly, grateful that Oliver is the one person who doesn't hold back, forcing him to be sharper, more present, more aware. He's not afraid to stick an arrow in him to prove a point, and Barry's mind goes to such a place that he misses the next blow entirely, taking it hard to the chin with a _grunt_ that snaps Oliver out of it immediately.

"You okay?" he asks, breathing hard, reaching for Barry's jaw. He can _feel_ the black bruise forming and nods anyway, Oliver's left hand joining his right so he can frame Barry's face. Resting his forehead against Barry's, he stays there, and Barry shuts his eyes.

"I'm sorry," Oliver says.

"Ollie, it's okay," Barry husks.

"I'm sorry," Oliver repeats, and kisses him, and Barry doesn't ask what he's sorry for.

. o .

"I don't – I'm not delusional," Barry says, as they sit across from each other on the couch, Oliver's legs beside his, feet by his hips, too restless to sleep even though it's three-forty-nine AM. His eyes are heavy, but his mind is wide awake, gaze fixed on Oliver's. "I know what you do, Ollie. I know what you've _done_. And I – it doesn't change – I know _you_ ," he insists, fiercely, Meaning It at the top of his lungs. "You're a good person, Ollie. What we do – we have to make hard decisions. We have to. You made a choice, and something terrible happened, and all we can do? Is live with it."

Oliver says, "Do you want an ice pack?"

Barry's face throbs. He holds Oliver's feet. "I'm serious." When Oliver says nothing, he presses, "I know it hurts like hell to make a choice that gets someone killed. I know that." _I-know-that, I-know-that, I-live-with-it-every-day-I-wake-up-and-there-is-an-entire-swath-of-who-I-am-that-I-can-never-reclaim-I-know-that-I-know-that-I-know-that._ "What you did – you made a mistake. You're not the first to do so. And what happened was awful, and I'm not saying that it's – I'm glad you feel the way you do because it shows you're _human_ , Ollie. I know it hurts."

 _I-know, I-know, I-know._

Oliver pulls his feet back and Barry lets him reclaim them, wordlessly accepting Oliver into his arms when he sits up on his knees before folding over him.

"You sound like me," he tells the couch cushions.

"You're smarter than I am," Barry tells him, a hand in his hair.

Oliver huffs. "I've been alive longer. They're different."

Barry closes his eyes, willing the Speed within him to rise to the surface, to be even more present than it normally is. Oliver's shoulder relax infinitesimally against him.

He sounds so tired when he says, "You are the one person in my life I haven't _hurt_ so deeply I didn't know how to fix it."

Barry can't speak, holding on.

Oliver settles against him more heavily. Barry will never be as built as Oliver is, but he doesn't mind the pressure at all. It presses on still-fading soreness, soreness he half-thinks may never heal, but it's something better, something more promising. _I won't let anyone hurt you._

 _That's a lie_ , Barry tells him, scratching the back of his neck lightly. _And you know it._

Oliver relaxes. _Let me try_ , he says, nuzzling Barry's shoulder. _Let me try_.

And Barry lets him.


	20. Trusting More

Barry stays.

Oliver doesn't question the plus one in his life, letting Barry inhabit his space. A steady torrent of rain occludes the city through the big glass windows, darkening the room. It's eight or nine in the morning now; Oliver lost track around four. Sleep tugs invitingly at his shoulders, but it will not come to his restless mind. When he closes his eyes, all he can see is Billy's face, a stark, merciless reminder that he is no hero.

Barry asks in a voice an octave deeper than normal, "Y'okay?"

"I thought you were asleep," Oliver grunts back, equally tired.

Barry flattens a palm against his back affectionately. "You think too loudly."

Oliver can't contest it. He shuffles so he can sit up and Barry wraps his hands around Oliver's hips. His grip is steady. His eyes are only half-open. "I need to get to work," he acknowledges, cupping the unbruised side of Barry's face. He can't resist leaning over to kiss his forehead, inhaling deeply, like he can bottle Barry's lightning and take it with him. Maybe he _could._

But there's no need to; it's already all over him.

When he gets up, Barry lets him go. "Be safe," Barry says. Tucking an arm over his face, he exhales and is gone, asleep in seconds. Oliver envies him, but he's still the mayor.

Star City needs him.

Standing in a suave suit in a room full of shadows, Oliver struggles to focus on politics. He can feel Billy Malone's blood on his hands. He has an irrational urge to walk into SCPD and confess, to tell them everything, to reveal that he's the Green Arrow, anything to keep his heart from breaking open. It has nothing to do with fame or notoriety or even a sense of moral rightness: he simply does not want to carry the weight anymore.

He sits through three relentless hours of work, mind-numbing fatigue settling in around noon, and by one he excuses himself to the one place he can still set the weight down. Barry is still asleep, snoring softly. Oliver pads around the apartment barefoot and does not wake him.

He texts John, catching up with him and The Kids. He doesn't dare text Felicity; he has no words. They need space and time, a moment to breathe in the aftermath apart from each other. Even so, he aches to reconnect, to suffer with. He misses his best friends.

Sliding his phone back into a pocket, he turns and finds Barry sitting upright, watching him. "Hey," he says in a low rumble. "C'mere." He holds out his arms, waving his hands invitingly, and Oliver doesn't fight it, stepping forward and holding on. "I love you," he tells Oliver, and Oliver's heart hurts, his fingers tightening in the back of Barry's shirt. "I love you," he insists, all Speed-warm and sleepy as he stands and presses against Oliver, nuzzling his shoulder. "I love you, I love you, I love you."

Oliver hugs him as tightly as he can and he knows it hurts, but he can't force himself to let go. On the verge of falling apart, he trembles, and Barry stands steady, holding him up when his own legs threaten to give way.

The Flash saves people, and Oliver can see it, the instinctive, bone-deep, relentless need to pour his love somewhere. There's an almost-guilty hesitance regarding reciprocity, a shy head-ducking speechlessness that surrenders to acceptance under the right pressure. _You deserve to be loved,_ he tells Barry, hands flat against the middle of his back.

 _You deserve to be loved._

He backs Barry up, asking for trust, and Barry grants it, easily following his rhythm. It's still raining, and a rumble of thunder seems to sit in Barry's chest when he hums against Oliver. They cross a threshold and the bedroom is darker, but he can still make out those ever-golden eyes, dim with fondness and heartbreak all in one. Shedding his suit and tie, he presses against Barry, begging forgiveness without a word.

Barry lets him get off his own shirt, like he was waiting. The he crowds forward and accepts him instead.

. o .

Spent and lying next to him, Oliver traces a lightning bolt across Barry's heart.

The lightning burns in such proximity it feels like it's under _his_ skin. It's an irresistible feeling, a sense of security that transcends. It's a promise of other lifetimes, of universes where they are whole and universes where they are more broken, and an underlying acceptance of this little corner that is theirs.

He traces his hand across unbroken skin, quiet and contemplative. He lingers over remembered injuries, brushing a thumb over the skin like he'll wipe off a layer of concealer and reveal the scars. Nothing changes, Barry's gaze following him.

An unpresumptuous hand settles on his own waist, just beside a cookie cutter row of punctures. It waits, expectant. "Shark bite," Oliver says at last.

Barry's eyebrows arch. He looks tempted to ask for more – _how on Earth_ – but he says nothing, tracing a hand directly over the punctures. The red agitation vanishes, leaving only the marks themselves behind.

Oliver stares. With affectionate satisfaction, Barry lays his palm flat against it, and Oliver knows the scar is still there, but the stinging soreness he'd half-forgotten about is gone. "You're unbelievable," he tells Barry, reaching out and cupping the back of his neck, pulling him close for a kiss.

Barry closes his eyes and hums idly in response, breaking off so he can mouth along Oliver's throat. _Mm you're very welcome,_ he mumbles into Oliver's collar. Oliver scruffs him lightly in warning when his hips rock upwards, _we're-not-all-speedsters_ , and Barry shivers and stills. _Sorry._

Oliver hauls him close. _Don't be._

. o .

"You look rested," John acknowledges.

They're back in the cave, and it's quiet without The Kids. Still, it's home. There's a strange sense of peace to be had here, the one corner of the arena he can hang up his coat in.

Or, as it happens, put it on. Oliver adjusts a final strap on his arm, suited up. It feels simultaneously great and unbearable to be back in uniform. "Slept well," he alludes.

John huffs. "I'm not stupid."

"Never said you were, John," Oliver replies.

John says, "Be careful, Oliver."

Oliver replies, "Always am."

And that's all he needs to say.


End file.
